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rogsmitty

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 28, 2011
8
0
Honolulu, HI
I have a first gen 500Gb TC that's been refurbished by Apple (typical 18 month failure) and has been working just fine ever since then. I'm running out of space now that I have an iMac and a Macbook Pro that use it as a backup device. Just wondering what you guys think of the current gen as compared to the first gen. Is it a significant boost when it comes to wireless performance? And if so, does it even really matter when it comes to using it as a backup device? If all you gain from the current gen is shaving a few minutes off backing up, then is it really worth it?

Anyways, bottomline question is this: Should I buy a new bigger time capsule or just upgrade the hard drive in my first gen TC?

Thanks for your opinions!
 

rogsmitty

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 28, 2011
8
0
Honolulu, HI
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

Anyone?
 

Brian33

macrumors 65816
Apr 30, 2008
1,407
345
USA (Virginia)
My choice was to replace the hard drive in my 1st-gen Time Capsule. I didn't need better performance, range, or dual-band capability, and didn't want to spend extra money. If one of those features would make a difference to you, you'll have a harder time deciding.

Another choice is to buy a USB external drive and plug it into your existing TC.

To upgrade mine, I followed the excellent directions here: Cracking Open the Time Capsule (Applefritter). It was easy, and I'm no expert.

I put in a 2 TB WD20EARS drive, and it's been working perfectly. However, several other people had a problem with the same drive, so you'll probably want to choose a different one. There's a long thread about it here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1059249/. The gist of is that for everyone except me, the WD20EARS would not "spin-down" like the original drive does when it is idle (i.e., between backups). If I remember correctly, there was some success with Samsung drives.
 

rogsmitty

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 28, 2011
8
0
Honolulu, HI
Thanks Brian. I read through that post previously and it seems easy enough to do. I'm leaning that way now, but I'm a little hesitant. Not because of the upgrade process, but because of my confidence in the unit. It's been working fine since the repair, but I feel like it's only a matter of time until it fails again. I've read again and again that it is not the hard drive that is the issue, but the power supply. The dang thing runs just way too hot. I guess I wouldn't lose too much if I went ahead and purchased a new drive for it, because, even if it failed, I still would be able to take out the drive and get an enclosure for it...so not a total loss.

But I digress, I think I'll just go ahead and upgrade it. Anyone else have any thoughts?
 
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