Upgrading a Time Capsule HDD

[designgeek]

So I just pulled the trigger on a Caviar Green 2TB "No I'm not compensating for anything" drive off of newegg for an amazing deal and now I want to put it in my Time Capsule (dual band). I know it has been done but I'm wondering if anyone here had any advice on how the disassembly went or any unexpected tools I might need etc.

Thanks for any help and please keep the snide "get a life" remarks to yourself.

 

[skorpien]

I've done the same upgrade, but to a 1st gen 500GB TC. It's now a 1.5TB and it works great! I'd google some guides to get you started if I were you. It's fairly straight forward. Just peel back the rubber base, unscrew the bottom, peel the heat sensor off of the HDD and do the swap making sure you transfer the screws that hold the drive in place. I believe a phillips is all you'll need, but the guides will tell you for certain (been a while since I've done it). And if you peel the heat sensor off carefully, there will be enough adhesive on the part that holds it in place for you to reapply it without having to use any type of paste. Same goes for the rubber base.

 

[designgeek]

And if you peel the heat sensor off carefully, there will be enough adhesive on the part that holds it in place for you to reapply it without having to use any type of paste.

Thanks! This is what I'm most concerned about. I found a guide on HardMac that looks good, it's just not as thorough as say ifixit would be. I'm excited to give it a go since I got the drive for $140US so add that to my refurb 500GB TC that I got for like $220 I have a 2TB for $360 and a 500 gig drive to mess around with.

 

[designgeek]

Holy god it worked! I'm so glad I did this! It was really easy, I'd highly recommend it to anyone, save yourselves some money and get to have an extra HDD to play around with.

 

[Surely]

Good thread. Nice to know this is possible.

I've been eyeing the refurb 500GB Time Capsule......... it's good to know that I'd be able to use it as is until I need more space, and then I can simply swap in a new HDD.

 

[designgeek]

It's totally cool, the only issue I ran into (this happened before I started this particular project) is that .sparsebundle images don't care about all the new free space. I moved my Time Machine backups from my 250GB external onto the 500GB TC and a short while later it said my disk was full despite the fact that the file only took up half the space. I tried editing its .plist file to indicate a 300GB drive it still didn't work. So since I now have more data capacity than sense I'm leaving the old backups on the old TC drive and starting fresh with the 2TB.

Either way I spent $209 on the TC, got the 2TB WD Caviar Green for $140 (Cyber Monday deal on Newegg) and $10 on an anti-static wrist strap for a total of $360.

 

[skorpien]

It's totally cool, the only issue I ran into (this happened before I started this particular project) is that .sparsebundle images don't care about all the new free space. I moved my Time Machine backups from my 250GB external onto the 500GB TC and a short while later it said my disk was full despite the fact that the file only took up half the space. I tried editing its .plist file to indicate a 300GB drive it still didn't work. So since I now have more data capacity than sense I'm leaving the old backups on the old TC drive and starting fresh with the 2TB.

Either way I spent $209 on the TC, got the 2TB WD Caviar Green for $140 (Cyber Monday deal on Newegg) and $10 on an anti-static wrist strap for a total of $360.

Glad to hear it worked. I was reluctant to do it myself and had just planned on using the 1.5TB as an external connected to my TC for TM backups with the internal HDD used as a network drive. But when the TM backups started failing on the external, I said "the hell with it" and plunged in head first. Glad I did, extended AppleCare be damned

Odd to hear that your Time Machine backup didn't recognize all the extra space. When I swapped my drive, I made a copy of the .sparsebundle file onto my desktop from the old drive, swapped the two, then copied it back to the new drive (all done over network, took a LONG time). Granted my .sparsebundle files were relatively small compared to yours, but when I continued my backups the free space was immediately recognized.

 

[designgeek]

Yeah, I think the .sparsebundle locks in the size of the hard drive it's created on or something. Anyway, after many many hours my new backup to the TC's new drive is done and everything is going well. DoFoT9 thinks it will fail but what evs...