Apple Time Capsule partitioning
I bought an apple time capsule (TC) 5th Gen with AC wireless connection to get the best wifi speed. Planning was to install a NAS hard drive, partition it then use it as a media server. Reading/writing speed of the HDD was 30mbpc which was good enough for streaming media. Gen 4 had around 20mbps R/W speed via wifi which I didn’t like. If I use wire (LAN port) direct to computer that goes over 50mbps R/W speed which I only use to transfer data into it from other medias.
upgrading time capsule hard drive : is not an easy task. I bought a 8TB seagate barracuda with 256 cache @5200rmp knowing that original HDD inside was a similar one. Watched a YouTube video to open it and remove the original HDD. Had to cut the two bottom gaskets to fit the hard drive in as there were 4 wires running on top of it. Anyway I was feeling comfortable to stick the wires in using my fingers other than spudger. But tweezer was necessary to open the wires.
partitioning time capsule hard drive: now I found a lot of misleading information about partitioning the TC HDD. First of all you must format the new hard drive using the Airport utility to make it readable by the time capsule. Otherwise TC will keep showing that HDD needs repair. I had to put the new HDD in the TC and wire data cable and power cable temporarily. Then connected with OSX MONTEREY via airport utility. As usual once it was showing HDD needs repair, I just erased the HDD on airport utility. Now switch off the TC, undo wiring. I used a USB 3 HDD reader to connect it to my MacBook Pro. Then found that airport utility created three partitions in it. APconfig and APswap were for system files which I didn’t touch. Used the disk utility to partition the drive which came with a name of Airport Disk and 8TB space.
It is very important that only Mac extended journal partition will work, as because the Airport Disk came with Mac extended journal partition and configuration. When it was erased with airport utility.
finally put the HDD back into TC with 4 partitions (2TB each). The partition name Airport Disk was left as 2TB partition for TIME MACHINE backup. Used USB 3 connection to transfer pile of media into the partitions before putting the HDD back into TC.
it’s working fine.
