Using Airport Time Capsule as Hard Drive

The A1470 Time Capsule was discontinued in April of 2018, so your Time Capsule is at least 5 years old and as much as 10 years old, depending on when it was originally placed into service.

Before we get too far into things, I would not recommend that you store important data like your photos on a hard drive that is 6-7 years old or older, unless you will also be storing backups on another new hard drive.

If the Time Capsule is set up correctly, the device will appear in AirPort Utility and also under the Locations heading on the left side panel of any Finder window.

So, the first check would be to open AirPort Utility. Does the Time Capsule appear? If yes, click on the Time Capsule and a smaller window will appear with information about the Time Capsule. Click Edit in that smaller window and another larger window will appear with settings for the Time Capsule.

Next, click the "smiley face" Finder icon on the dock. Look at the left side panel of the window and locate a setting for Locations. The name of the Time Capsule should appear under this heading.

Post back on your progress.

By chance, does your Mac have an Ethernet port so that you could temporarily connect an Ethernet cable from the Mac to one of the three LAN <--> Ethernet ports on the Time Capsule to try to access the settings using AirPort Utility that way?

If yes, you would want to temporarily turn off the Wi-Fi on your Mac to insure that the connection from your Mac to the Time Capsule will be over the wired Ethernet cable connection.

Otherwise, we are in a Catch 22 here. We need to check a few more settings on the Time Capsule using AirPort Utility, but we can't access the settings to check them.

The only way to recover in this case is perform a Hard Reset on the Time Capsule and then set it up again to see if that will allow access to the settings information using AirPort Utility.

Post back when you can.

With the Mac connected by Ethernet to the Time Capsule......

Open AirPort Utility

Click on the Time Capsule and then click Edit in the smaller window that appears

Click on the Network Tab at the top of the window

The setting for Router Mode should read "Off" (Bridge Mode)"

Is that the case? If not, change the setting for Router Mode to "Off (Bridge Mode)" and then click Update to apply the settings and let the Time Capsule restart.

Disconnect the Ethernet cable and check to see whether you can access AirPort Utility that way. If not, then something very mysterious is occurring.

If the Time Capsule is working the way you want, I would leave well enough alone and know that you can access the settings on the Time Capsule using an Ethernet connection from your Mac if you need to to make any future changes on the Time Capsule.

Click on Locations on the left panel of any Finder window

Click on the name of your Time Capsule and a folder with the name of the Time Capsule will appear in the window to the right

Double-Click the folder to open the Time Capsule hard drive. (The drive icon will appear on the Mac's desktop)

Right-Click anywhere in the open window and select New Folder

Name and folder and move the data that you want to store to the folder by using copy/paste or drag/drop

As a last resort before throwing in the towel, the only thing really left to do at this point is reset the Time Capsule and then set it up again to see if that will straighten things out.

This will not take more than 10-15 minutes at most.

If you want to try this, we will need to know the make and model number of the device that you call your "modem". We do not need a serial number......just the manufacturer name and model number.

Thanks for the info.

We should have asked about your "modem" or "modem/router" on our very first reply. Instead, made the mistake of thinking that you had a normal modem or modem/router.

Your Zyxel device is a phone that has some modem/router capabilities, but the Time Capsule was not designed to work with this type of device.

So, that would explain why the instructions that you initially followed were not working correctly and our "checks" were not producing the normal expected results.

We can tell you how to try to set up the Time Capsule with your Zyxel device, but we cannot say whether it will work. It is possible that you have already done everything correctly and a new setup will not help in this case.