I have a time capsule which is obsolete for backups now that I have mac os 27.
I have bought an external hard drive and wondered if I could connect that via the time capsule for simplicity rather than connect it directly to the laptop which takes up one of the ports and I will need to remember to eject before removing the laptop from its home base.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 27.0
Zuraczurx pretty much covered it. For file sharing, the Time Capsule (TC) can only support either the AFP or SMB protocols. AFP is now "retired" and the TC only supports SMB 1.0, which is very unsecure.
When I was still using the TC (last time around 2018), even though I managed to connect a variety of USB-powered external drives, there was always "lack of power" issues using them. Even self-powered drives didn't perform much better.
The other issue was poor data transfer rates. You might get away with simple file transfers, but anything that requires high & consistent rates (like streaming video) is pretty much dismal at best.
If cost is an issue, the idea of using a Raspberry Pi, is quite doable as it does support SMB 3.x ... but, again be aware, that data transfer rates, will still not be stellar.
The bottom line? If transfer rate performance is critical to you, you basically have two options for Time Machine backups:
Zuraczurx pretty much covered it. For file sharing, the Time Capsule (TC) can only support either the AFP or SMB protocols. AFP is now "retired" and the TC only supports SMB 1.0, which is very unsecure.
When I was still using the TC (last time around 2018), even though I managed to connect a variety of USB-powered external drives, there was always "lack of power" issues using them. Even self-powered drives didn't perform much better.
The other issue was poor data transfer rates. You might get away with simple file transfers, but anything that requires high & consistent rates (like streaming video) is pretty much dismal at best.
If cost is an issue, the idea of using a Raspberry Pi, is quite doable as it does support SMB 3.x ... but, again be aware, that data transfer rates, will still not be stellar.
The bottom line? If transfer rate performance is critical to you, you basically have two options for Time Machine backups:
According to the internet this is possible but I have never managed to make it work. Every time I've connected a disc to one of my Time Capsules the green light on the front changed to amber (or maybe red). It might have been a PSU problem so if your disc is powered separately from USB give it a go. I also suspect that Tahoe onwards dropping AFP might prevent this working in the future; I'm sure someone will chip in to confirm or deny.
You have a couple of other options.
Your router might have a USB port that supports a HDD. Many routers have such a port but all the ones I've used have serious limitations on them. My current router requires the disc to be FAT32 and, from memory, <1GB, which makes it impractical to use. Yours might be different.
I use a Raspberry Pi which wirelessly (or ethernet cable) connects to my network and I've configured it so I connect a USB drive to it and Time Machine backs up to it. There are some very good tutorials online - start with the Raspberry Pi Forum if you're interested - and it took me about half an hour to set it all up and get it working.
Good points, Tesserax.
Regarding transfer speed - I don't think it's that important for Time Machine backups unless they're run manually at long intervals, when a lot of data will be transferred. If the TM backup are hourly, or even daily, then the amount of data being transferred is quite small, so transfer speed is not that important. The only caveats I'd add are:
I don't do either of those - my daily data changes are small and I run daily, not hourly, TM backups. I run my RasPi NAS and a QNAP NAS off the same wireless access point upstairs and I've never noticed one taking much longer than the other.
Connecting an external hard drive to Time Capsule
