Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
OK, so the Hard Drive that came with the Time Capsule is apparently failing. I never really worked right, but now it is definitely close to its impending doom. I have a 4th generation Time Capsule and wanted to know if it is possible to install a 4TB and what brand will work best without a lot of hoops to jump through.
Airport Extreme-OTHER, Windows 8
Yes a 4TB will work.. You want a Green drive ie a low consumption one.. the speed of the drive is irrelevant as they are processor bound so any cheap green from any company should work.
Do a google search if you want a specific one. I have not used a 4TB but I have used lots of different 3TB and all work fine.. some may have spin down issues and it is hard to predict. ie one firmware revision might work and another not on the same brand.
Since Apple are not yet using 4TB drives.. there is no preferred one.
Some people are installing 4TB in their new Gen5.
What's the earliest generation of Time Capsule that will support 4TB drives?
Any will work.. expect more spin down issues on older ones.. and Gen1 or Gen2 are going to have power supply issues.. especially with a bigger higher spinup current drives. Plus they are even more processor bound.. speed of the Gen3 - Gen 5 on the network is much better. At least 50% improvement due to 50% processor speed upgrade. 800mhz in Gen1 and 2 to 1200mhz in Gen3 and Gen4.. Gen5 are actually slower.. it is a slower processor again.
I can confirm the 2010/2011 MC343B/A Time Capsule supports 4TB. I just upgraded from the drive from 1TB to 4TB without any issues (it's way easier than upgrading the Mac Mini), there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube showing you how it's done. Once upgraded use the Airport Utility to initialise the new drive, and from Time Machine in OSX select your new 4TB backup disk. You can kiss goodbye to the grey rubber base however as that doesn't seem to come off in one piece, but to be honest there will be better cooling and ventilation without it.
You can kiss goodbye to the grey rubber base however as that doesn't seem to come off in one piece, but to be honest there will be better cooling and ventilation without it
Heat up the rubber with a hair dryer or heat gun.. until really hot.. spend 5min slowly bringing it up to temperature about as hot as you can touch.. I use a pair of leather garden gloves to hold it and pull.. the glue will release easily when hot. And it leaves the TC looking much neater as all the glue should also come off.. although gen4 they changed glue and it is not so easy to get off.. I have pull off at least 50 of the them without splitting one.
can i upgrade the time capsule hard drive to 4 TB?
