My Airport Time Capsule has been filled for a number of years. I found a Seagate UltraSlim Portable Storage external HD with 2T capacity. Can I just plug it in to the USB port of the Capsule to get more capacity?
You can plug a USB drive into the TC. They don't always work directly (TC uses old USB2 and has power limitations) but if you have issues a powered USB hub can help. Sometimes!!
It will not add capacity like a NAS does with raid.. to expand the capacity to 4TB for example. It will add a second drive.. slow btw.. very slow.. so you have 2+2 TB. You can backup one computer to the external USB and one to the internal. Remember that external drive will go at 25% of the speed of the internal drive.
A filled TC is useless .. why don't you get another 2TB drive and archive the contents and then erase the TC internal drive and start over. Archive is available on the disk tab of the airport utility.
If you need an old backup you can plug the USB archive disk directly into the computer and mount the disk in Finder.
You can plug a USB drive into the TC. They don't always work directly (TC uses old USB2 and has power limitations) but if you have issues a powered USB hub can help. Sometimes!!
It will not add capacity like a NAS does with raid.. to expand the capacity to 4TB for example. It will add a second drive.. slow btw.. very slow.. so you have 2+2 TB. You can backup one computer to the external USB and one to the internal. Remember that external drive will go at 25% of the speed of the internal drive.
A filled TC is useless .. why don't you get another 2TB drive and archive the contents and then erase the TC internal drive and start over. Archive is available on the disk tab of the airport utility.
If you need an old backup you can plug the USB archive disk directly into the computer and mount the disk in Finder.
A few comments.......
The Seagate drive will need to be formatted in Mac OS Extended Journaled to work well with the USB port on the Time Capsule.
The USB port on the Time Capsule is underpowered, so you may....or may not....need to use a powered USB hub with the Seagate drive, even if the Seagate drive has its own power supply.
The USB port on the Time Capsule is an old and slow USB 2.0 design, so backups/copies are going to be slow, and will take about twice as long as backups to the Time Capsule hard drive.
Adding the Seagate drive to the Time Capsule will not increase the storage capacity of the Time Capsule hard drive. You will still have two separate hard drives, each with their own storage capacity.
If you have a Best Buy in your area, contact the Geek Squad for help. An authorized Apple Service shop would be another option.
What I need is a smart "twenty something" to come over here and do a lot of this stuff for me!
They are all playing warcraft etc in the basement.
A computer club in your area might be a good source for helpful person.
Post what city you are in... it is difficult to make person to person contact via forum.. you cannot post personal details but someone might live nearby who sees this and post a web address.
Thank you. What I need is a smart "twenty something" to come over here and do a lot of this stuff for me!
Adding external memory to Time Capsule
