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Habitus

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 26, 2009
605
0
Where ever my life takes me...
Has anyone replaced their time capsule internal drive with a larger one? I have a external drive that uses a 3.5" internal drive. I want to swap it with my 500GB TC internal drive. Thanks!!

Habitus
 
Thanks for the reply!

Here's my situation:

I have a seagate free agent 1TB external hard drive. The internal drive is 3.5"

Would this work in my TC? My TC has a 500GB hard drive and I want to swap it.

After installing the drive, would I have to reformat it even if I as using it for time machine?

How difficult was the swap?

Thanks!

Habitus
 
Install the drive, open airport utility and go to disks and format it in there.


Also you just need a Phillips #00 screwdrive for the 10 mini screws.
and a torx t6 for the others holding the drive in.
for some reason mine were a bit of a hassle to get iout, not sure if the ones i had were specifically torx either
 
A phillips worked for the screws holding the drive in for me. They didn't particularly look like T6 screws, but it wouldn't hurt to have one on hand.

Also, make sure that the Seagate is a SATA drive. Won't work if it's IDE. TC takes 3.5" SATA hard drives, and just format the drive as HFS+ (Extended Journaled) using Disk Utility before you place it into your TC. I think that's all that's required but you could also erase the drive once it's inside the TC using AirPort Utility.

Edit: Just re-read your post and saw the question about having used it for Time Machine. The thing is, you'll have to restart your Time Machine backups anyway assuming you meant that you were using the external for Time Machine backups. Time Machine backs up differently to a networked drive than to a drive attached to the computer so your old backups probably won't work. You can try not formatting it assuming your external's already formatted HFS+ and see if it works. I'm kind of curious now :p Good luck! And btw, it wasn't very difficult at all to do the swap. The most difficult part for me was getting the rubber pad off of the bottom of the TC.
 
The external interface isn't what matters, it's the internal interface. You'll need to open it up to check if it doesn't list it in the drive's specs. Though I'm willing to bet since the enclosure offers eSATA as an option, the internal drive would be SATA.
 
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