Internal disk needs repair

Using Mini for backup is great as long as you own one.. IMHO it is a bit expensive to buy purely as replacement for the TC.

I was going to do the same thing. Even bought parts.. then went to Synology NAS instead. I sold off 2x 2011 and 1x 2012 plus thunderbolt dock. I was going to rebuild the mini with SATA to ESATA extension cables and an ESATA disk box.. all unused. Thunderbolt disk dock is a bit pricy. Hopefully with USB-C / Thunderbolt3 becoming more common across PC as well as Mac the costs will come down a lot.

If you are a DIYer.. my suggestion would be go for DIY NAS. A cheap end ITX board with 4-6 SATA ports is a lot easier to use and gives much better latency than USB 3 at lower cost. While the mini is great it just misses and makes it expensive by the time you add the peripherals compared to starting with basic PC hardware.

A real NAS being an even better option if you want something prebuilt. Although the new prices can be sky high at the moment; a second hand rack type QNAP or Synology, even fairly old, was designed for commercial use and built like a truck. Up to $2000 new.. after a few years they sell for $400-800. I bought a TS-879U-RP which I upgraded to i5 processor and 8GB of RAM with parts on hand mostly. It has 8 drive slots, 4 gigabit ports plus two empty slots for 10Gb ethernet or wireless cards. Plus USB3 and ESATA. I subsequently sold it, since it is excellent time to sell right now. And it was a bit too big and powerful for what I need these days. But hardware wise.. far superior .. and you can see why they cost so much new.

Commercial hardware that does not do much trade into domestic is always worth a look.

HP Microserver has been another big seller here. Very popular for a DIY NAS or File Server. In NAS form totally usable to Mac as to PC.

• 2 x 5Tb Seagate Backup products (Not very fond of these though)

SMR drives.. all of the Seagate above 4TB in the backup are SMR. And it might go down to 1TB now. Slow and terrible latency.

Big outburst at the moment because all the companies have been sneaking SMR drives into their ranges like WD Red. Loads of outrage on youtube.

You would not want to "steal" a drive from a TC Gen 1, since it would be 11+ years old, long overdue to fail. The drive in a Gen 4 would be at least 7 years old and as much as 9+ depending on when it was placed into service.

It's your call, but I would not keep data on a 6-7 year old hard drive unless I could afford to lose it.

An External USB connected to the Time Capsule is going to be S--L--O--W since the port is an ancient USB 2.0 design that runs at about half that speed due to processor limitations in the Time Capsule. Expect backups to take at least 2-3 times longer than backups to the Time Capsule disk.

If you don't want to see the blinking amber light, take a look at the Preferences in AirPort Utility and uncheck all the boxes. There may also be an option in AirPort Utility under Status to "ignore" the message about the hard drive.

The simplest, cheapest, fastest and most reliable way to back up is to connect a USB drive directly your Mac. Personally, I have used LaCie drives for a number of years with flawless results, but there are any number of other good choices available. Direct backups like this are much simpler than backups over a network, so there are less chances of something going wrong in this type of setup.

If you also need a new router in addition to a device to work with Time Machine backups, there are no other manufacturers that offer a router with the built in hard drive, like the Time Capsule. The closest that you will come to this type of solution is a router by Synology or Asus that offers a USB port to connect a drive directly to the router so you can back up over the network. Both Synology and Asus products will support Time Machine backups. Most other routers do not.

If you already have a router, and you want to be able to back up over a network, then you could add a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. Synology seems to be a favorite of forum users.

Stay tuned for opinions from other users as well.

What model is your TC?

The post you looked at is very old.. 2013. That happened to be the change over year, Gen4 TC A1409 to the last AC model, which is more tower shaped. A1470. We call it Gen5 but Apple never did.

I really would say replacement of the disk in Gen5 is not such an easy job. Plus they have a number of faults that show up as they age. If it has reached 5 years old then replacement of the whole thing is well worth considering.

They use rubber wedges to hold in the disk. You will need to be creative to replace them as they fit the exact model Seagate drive only.

The Gen4 is now 7-9years old which makes me feel old typing it. Hardware wise I much prefer this design but lots of them are starting to fail. And depending on what you use it for it might well be due replacement. It uses proper mounting mechanism which is brand agnostic. How much longer it might last after a disk upgrade is anyone's guess.. but I would say the power supply also needs replacement as well as increased cooling.

Do you have brand/drive recommendations?

If you go down the drive upgrade route, you do want a low power drive. 5400rpm

Although most drives are fairly efficient now, faster drives give no better performance and are noisy.

I have used most brands.. HGST or Toshiba are sort of favourites. Older WD Red are great. The older WD Green were fine but that series was finished. Gen4 mostly used WD Green.

For replacement you can use any size up to 8TB or even larger. I have tested up to 8TB.

WD just replaced the WD red for SMR based drive.. without telling anyone.. avoid these like the plague. Lots of angst on youtube if you care to look.

You can no longer trust any company so carefully look around for details. WD somehow managed to leave it off the spec sheet even. Depending on what size you are after stock of previous model are fine. And larger sizes or pro series drives.

For the moment.. you can pull the bad drive from the Gen5 TC.

If you don't replace it you will get a bad drive error but it will continue to work as an Extreme.

You can bridge the Gen4 TC, plug it into the Gen5 and run it just for backups. They are just as fast as the Gen5 but of course only have N wireless which you can turn off.

As a matter of interest I have used WD purple drives (designed for surveillance work) and they are a good choice in TC. I have not heard they went SMR and as long as it has the same model number as older ones they are fine. As are the older WD Reds.. just buy ones that have model number ending FRX not FAX ?? I think those are the numbers.

BTW HGST is owned by WD now.. just in case your issue is with WD itself.

You alluded to issues with the tower models. Can you elaborate a bit?

Build quality is poor cf the earlier ones. Build design is really neat from the outside short term.

Long term they are bound to end up full of dust and really horrible to pull apart and put back together. Many people have been forced to open it to clean or replace the fan. There are a bunch of surface mount plugs that will fall off the board if you stare at it long enough. And the cables are really difficult to actually insert and lock. The hard disk ribbon cable tears easily.. many people have upended the unit, hard drive slid straight out since there are no screws and ended up with a torn cable which is unique plug and cannot be replaced.

Replacement of the hard disk is a lot easier in the earlier models. And it is just as fast so Apple made no improvements over 10 years. No SMB2 protocol which is really essential for later Mac OS to reliably backup.

The bottom line with the "tower" version is that it was never designed to be repaired or serviced. It's a difficult undertaking even for good do it yourself types. If you decide to give it a try, be aware that the contents tend to self destruct, so you will need to be extremely careful removing the components. It is very easy to break a connector or tear a ribbon cable in the process.

Hint......the hard drive is not attached to anything inside the product, it is basically held in place by some rubber spacers.

I've done this once when the product was new to take a look at the insides of the product and would not look forward at all to doing it again. The guide below might be of some help.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPort+Time+Capsule+A1470+(Mini!)+Teardown/15067