Time Capsule HDD Upgrade A1355

FWIW, I have had good preformance from HGST Ultrastar series drives. They are industrial grade drives and come with a 5 year warranty. This may be overkill for a typical internal installation, but seems highly approriate to me for use as a Time Machine drive.I have also had good service from Toshiiba (by Hitachi) drives.

Personally I would not be too concerned about heat. Google's massive test of HDD failure rates indicated heat is not a major factor in HDD failure as had been previously thought and TM drives generally run in relatively short bursts of activity followed by long periods of inactivity or sleep. The HGST drives are available in configurations up to 4TB in capacity.

Showing my ignorance, Is HSGT western Digital?

These are hitachi drives.. hitachi was sold.. part to WD and part to Toshiba.. but they still sell drives under both their own name as well as Toshiba..

So the website now shows.. a wd company. http://www.hgst.com/

But the drives are Hitachi (and originally IBM, Ultrastar).

I disagree with Joe, not that these drives are not excellent.. I am sure they are.. and I am sure the heat is not the big issue it was to the drive.. but the heat will kill the TC stone dead.

Nor will the speed of 7200 rpm drives be of any use.. the TC is processor bound and so a green drive is the best still for them.

If you store files on the TC then as with any other file storage it must be backed up.. having the best drive in the world is still not a backup. Never ever leave files on a single point of failure.. because one day it will fail for sure. And the TC is not a NAS.. it has no means by which it can back itself up.. nor can TM backup a network drive.. so you will need a USB drive of equal size somewhere in the network.. or real file server/NAS somewhere to backup to, plus software that can handle it running on a computer.

I have looked at the start current of the 4TB ultrastar before.

http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/FD3F376DC2ECCE68882579D40082C393/$ file/US7K4000_ds.pdf

2A on 12v and 1.2A on 5v exceeds the spec of the TC power supply.

It is rated 12v 1A and 4.3A 5V

Not that the power supply will fail, it will simply dip the voltage but it can lead to long term supply failure or issues.

use a green drive but certainly consider carefully the fact that the drive will not last as long as an enterprise drive.

Sorry edit time is incredibly short here.

There is nothing wrong with the 3TB Green WD.. after all Apple used them.. for the whole of Gen4.. and I think had less failures than Seagate they used in iMac and had to replace the whole lot, and now use in Gen5.

The WD green are very quiet. I have just swapped to a 3TB seagate to try it in a TC and I think the drive is a lot noiser.

They are cheap consumer drives.. but unless you pay more than double the money.. you tend not to get anything much better.

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Storage/Hard+Drives/3.5+Inch+SATA+Drives/1.5TB+-+ 4TB/3TB+Western+Digital+Caviar+Green+WD30EZRX+3.5%22+SATA+III+Hard+Drive+-+HDD+? productId=46806

This Toshiba is a bit cheaper...

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Storage/Hard+Drives/3.5+Inch+SATA+Drives/1.5TB+-+ 4TB/Toshiba+DT+Series+3TB+SATA+III+3.5%22+Hard+Drive+-+Retail+?productId=57560

I am in two minds to go with the known WD or try the Toshiba.. when I checked last time a bad batch went through and they had a huge number of returns.. but that seems to happen to every brand.

My number one principle on buying hard drives.. unless you are building raids.. buy all different brands.. I had to upgrade disks in an office once and went for a huge stack of same brand same size.. and they had a flaw.. so in 12 months time they all died within the space of a few weeks of each other.. and although under warranty, the company was not at all pleased. So I try and buy drives .. maybe even ones I have had poor experience with.. and see how it goes.. !!

Spin down is an issue.. you can never guarantee spin down.. and even if it works it won't always work after a while.. Apple may well have special firmware on their disks.. lets say.. I have pulled a 3TB out of a Gen4 and installed it in a Gen2 and had issues with spin down.. it is IMHO therefore impossible to give iron clad guarantee that it works.. it should.. but nobody can know until you do it.

If you have not installed 7.6.4 firmware don't .. stick to 7.6.1 which should be fine.. sometimes you can get away with 7.5.2 but it may have issues with the disk that size.

Suck and see.

None.. it has nothing to do with disk size.. the TC should signal the disk to spin down.. and the disk firmware should spin down regardless with no data being read/write to the drive.

For whatever reason it just decides to not spin down.. Generally it works.. I think the issue is more putting the larger drives in the early TC.. the large drives in the later TC should be less of an issue.. certainly I have installed a 3TB green in a number of Gen4 which had bad drives or needed upgrade.. and have not had issues.. it is luck of the draw as each batch will have different drive firmware.

I am running a Gen4 now.. with a new 3TB seagate.. which I mentioned above was noisy.. but it does spin down.. most green drives have the spin down built into the drive itself.

It is really up to you.. I think any green drive is suitable.. you want at least 2TB and really 3TB is now pretty much the sweet spot.. 4TB still have a premium. The WD green is usually the cheapest of them.. behaves generally very well.. that is what I would recommend you buy. The Toshiba or hitachi or seagate are also possible alternatives. Ask the retailer which one they sell the most of and which has the least returns.

I was going to buy the toshiba.. then read this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149408

Real end user reviews tell you something.. 44% gave it 5stars.. 40% gave it 1star.. lowest rating.. for a part like hard disk.. it works or doesn't work.. 40% one star is not good.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W00YW3509

Bit better on WD green.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844

Bit better on the seagate.

As you can see most of the cheap end drives don't rate 100% or even 90%.

There are batches of drives... that are terrible.. that is why you ask the retailer at the point of purchase.. which of these is the selling and gets least returns.

I would also like to point out.. your Gen3 TC is more than 3years old. And like it or not.. they do have a lifespan.

Don't load stuff on that disk, that you do not have backed up elsewhere.. if that means you need to buy a 3TB usb drive then do it. Do not trust your files ever to a single drive.