Use of an old Airport Time Capsule

I meant to say, all I am trying to find out is if it can be used like a plug and play external hard drive.

No. As we have explained above, the Time Capsule is a "network" drive that was designed to connect to your modem or modem/router using a permanent, wired Ethernet cable connection. The Time Capsule is not a "local" drive that connects directly to your Mac like a USB or USB-C hard drive.

If you want to connect the Time Capsule directly to your Mac using an Ethernet cable, then you will not be able to use your WiFi network at all with your Mac during the time that the Time Capsule is backing up. When the Mac is finished backing up, you will need to disconnect the Time Capsule and switch your Mac back to your WiFi system. Few users would put up with this type of complexity and inconvenience.

So the bottom line here is that if you want to use the Time Capsule on your network, it will need to connect directly to your Plusnet Hub One router using a permanent wired Ethernet cable connection.

Since the Time Capsule was designed as a backup device.......and you say that you already have a backup system in place......there is really no need for you to use the Time Capsule at all unless you want to add a second backup system to back up your Mac computers using Apple's Time Machine software application.

Frankly, if you are confident with your current back up plan......you don't need the Time Capsule......especially since it is heading into the "suspect" category as far as its product life is concerned.

It could be used as a simple file server, but its performance will be less than stellar. If you want to go ahead and use it for that purpose, we would need to know a bit more about your current networking hardware and configuration. Also, it would be important to know the exact model of this Time Capsule.

Approximately how old is the Time Capsule? We ask this because the average useful life of the product is about 4-5 years......and with a product this age or older, you would not want to store any data on the Time Capsule hard drive that you cannot afford to lose.

If you already have another backup plan in place, it won't hurt to add the Time Capsule if you don't mind making things more complicated on your network, since the Time Capsule is a "network" drive that connects to your router......not a "local" drive that connects directly to your computer.

Frankly, I would do this as more of an experiment to learn about the Time Capsule setup and operation than anything else.

If you need some tips on setup of the Time Capsule, we'll need to know what model number you have, and whether you will be using a Mac or an iPhone / iPad to set things up. If the Time Capsule is an older "flat" or "square" version that looks like a small white pizza box, the model number is on the bottom. It starts with an "A" followed by 4 numbers.

If this describes the Time Capsule that you have, keep in mind that it is at least 5 years old and likely much older.

4 years old is right on the edge of the point where you need to be watching the Time Capsule closely.....and not storing any data on the device that you cannot afford to lose. For what its worth, mine died at 4 years and 5 months.

As we mentioned above, if you want to set up the Time Capsule on your network for fun or to experiment, we'll need to know whether you will be using a Mac or an iPhone / iPad to set things up......and......exactly what you want the Time Capsule to do on the network. For example.......

Do you want the Time Capsule to provide a wireless network signal?

Do you want the Time Capsule to act like a simple network hard drive? This is different than attaching a simple USB drive directly to a computer, so the setup to function on the network will be more complicated and prone to problems.

Since the Time Capsule must connect directly to your WiFi router using a permanent, wired Ethernet cable connection, it would help if you could provide the make and model number of your modem or modem/router.

There is no easy way to see what the hard drive capacity of a given Time Capsule might be, unless you are willing to set it up to operate on your network. Even at that, there are some additional steps that are necessary to learn about the hard drive.

If you want to save some time, probably 90%+ of the model of Time Capsule that you have were sold as 2 TB versions.