Upgrade & Partition TC internal hard disk - info howto

The Time Capsule comes with the disk formatted to a single data partition.. there is no way to change this via tools in the computer or airport utility. Whatever tool is internal on the TC is not accessible.. if you use erase it will reformat the drive and recreate the original partition. 2 of which are hidden.

There are three partitions in the actual drive.. only one of which you can see.

APconfig

APswap

data (or whatever name is used.. which can be changed via the airport utility).

You can create a disk image on the internal drive as a method of partitioning it.. not really the same thing.. but for most it works.

See http://pondini.org/TM/TCQ3.html for the method.

If you want to alter a TC actual hard disk, you need to remove it from the TC.. this will of course void the warranty. So before jumping, think about it.

I was asked to install a 3TB drive on a Gen 2 A1302 TC which I undertook with some trepidation as most of my reading of forums suggested hard disk above 2TB were impossible. It may not have worked with older firmware but on 7.6.1 it works just fine.. with this proviso.. the spin down may not work. The TC worked fine with a new 3TB WD green drive. I discovered the one used in the Gen 4 latest model is older WD drive.

WD30EZRS These are Sata1

The ones you buy now are WD30EZRX which are sata2 drives.. Swapping them around caused no problems on the Gen 4.. did not try on the Gen2.

You don't want to know how I found this out.

Since you are upgrading a drive and have it out.. how nice to actually partition it. This was tricky and I actually found very little info about it.. if any of you know where there is a howto I am glad to reference it.

I have previously installed new disks with no trouble.. but without the hidden partitions created I think it uses RAM for those files.. and it will toss up disk errors.

So you need to actually create all the partitions. This isn't hard. Although again ran into trouble with the USB to sata box I was using not being able to read 3TB drives.. so I was forced to directly connect to sata.. this may be difficult for most of you... Make sure you have the equipment to do the work before ordering 3TB drive.. My USB box can do 2TB.. but it recognises the 3TB as 800MB or GB.

Using disk utility change to 4 partitions.. (or whatever number you want.. 5 or 6 I guess are ok) There are two paritions for internal use.. I created APconfig and APswap .. set the size to .01GB or whatever.. you must type this in directly.. and it will change it to the min possible size partition.. 1.07GB on the 3TB.

This is a waste as the actual files used are tiny.. but.. you have lots of space.. you need to lose some to gain a lot more.. so be it.

Name your data partitions something suitable.. TCpart1 TCpart2 TCpart3 or data1 data2 data3

Make sure you format them using HFS+ and GUID type.

The TC still kicks up an error about the disk.. this is probably a nasty side effect of Disk Utility creating an EFI partition which is invisible..

So I am going to need to try again via the Command Line disk utility.. So I can create the partitions without using an EFI.

So expect further installment.. Anyone with Command Line instructions I would be glad of the help.