timeCapsule reFormat to hFSX

You can reformat the Time Capsule drive using the Airport Utility. Select Airport Utility Help in its Help menu. Search for "erase." Or click on the Disks tab to look for the method.

HFSX is HFS+, so your question was answered. How to verify or erase an AirPort Time Capsule disk - Apple Support.

Your Time Capsule is FAT? As far as I can tell you cannot repartition or reformat the Time Capsule without removing it and installing it in an external enclosure. I cannot find anything related to changing the disk format on a Time Capsule drive. As they have been designed for use with Apple hardware there is no reason to do so.

As per Kappy.. the internal drive of the TC is formatted HFS+ now and forever more.. it is impossible to format it any other way.

If you plugged an external drive into the TC.. unplug it and plug it into your Mac.. then reformat it.. there is no way to format a USB drive from the airport utility.

erase always formats the internal drive of the TC to HFS+.. always forevermore..

It is NOT repeat NOT FAT32 now.. unless you pulled out the drive from the TC and formatted it plugged into a computer.

I know that because there are vital partitions .. that must exist for the TC disk to work and they MUST be formatted HFS+ no choice.

Also Time Machine cannot work to a FAT32 drive.

But if you erase.. it will format all the necessary partitions on the drive back to what is correct.

And all will be HFS+.. as that is the only format TM can use.

I am going to attempt the impossible here.

Please give me the info which shows the disk is formatted fat32 on any generation of TC..

Here is my proof it is NOT so..

Here is a gen1 TC. First one.. you cannot have an earlier one.. because this is the first.

It is running the Hitachi 1TB disk.. here is how it looks in the old utility..

And the disk showing in the new utility.

Now I connect that hard disk to a Mac using a USB to Sata connector..

You can see the standard 3 partitions .. two hidden and the main data partition.

Please note the format.. Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

I wrote all this up ages ago as you can see back here.

Upgrade & Partition TC internal hard disk - info howto

Now let me do something dumb.. I will reformat the data partition fat32 and see if the TC can recognise it.

End result. Disk error.. it does work. sort of but it cannot be used for TM. No FAT32 disk is TM compatible.

Here is the setup I used to do all this.

Sorry it is a bit fuzzy.. I ran the disk in the TC and cross connected it to the Mac.

if i run erase will it reFormat to HFS+ or FAT32 ? if it do HFS+ then i will erase it.

Yes, it is now and forevermore HFS+

You are being totally fooled and tricked by your PC.

A Windows PC will "see" or "interpret" the Time Capsule disk....which is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) also known as HFS+......as a FAT32 partition.....even though the Time Capsule disk is HFS+

If you connect a Mac to the Time Capsule, you will see that the Time Capsule really is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or HFS+.

So, if you erase the Time Capsule disk, it will be in the same format that it always has been since you took it out of the box.....Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or HFS+.

As Bob has indicated.. the disk is seen over the network not in true format.. because windows has no ability beyond basics.. SMB file sharing will see the TC as NTserver. But neither the Mac nor the PC can view the format of the disk on the actual TC.. because it is 100% controlled by the TC itself.. and is offered to the network as AFP or SMB protocols.

Force the mounting of the TC to AFP.

So in Finder.. go, connect to server, AFP://10.0.1.1 (use whatever the actual IP of the TC is).

Mavericks made a change to using SMB by default. Why it works ok with USB disk plugged into the TC .. makes no sense to me .. but see what happens to the above.. I can promise you utterly and sincerely it is IMPOSSIBLE for the TC to run the internal disk in FAT32.. for the simple reason that TM requires HFS+ disk to work.

I can also prove it from the firmware of the TC.

This is from internal command of the firmware.. a place few can get into.

df -hl

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on

/dev/md0a 9.7M 9.1M 536K 94% /

/dev/flash2a 1.1M 35K 1.0M 3% /mnt/Flash

mfs:184 15M 512B 14M 0% /mnt/Memory

/dev/dk2 1.8T 14G 1.8T 0% /Volumes/dk2

# fsck_hfs -fdy /dev/dk2

** /dev/rdk2

** Checking HFS Plus volume.

** Checking Extents Overflow file.

** Checking Catalog file.

** Checking Catalog hierarchy.

** Checking volume bitmap.

** Checking volume information.

** The volume datatc appears to be OK.

gpt show -l sd0

start size index contents

0 1 PMBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 2097152 1 GPT part - "APconfig"

2097192 2097152 2 GPT part - "APswap"

4194344 3902834784 3 GPT part - "APdata"

3907029128 7

3907029135 32 Sec GPT table

3907029167 1 Sec GPT header

gpt show -u sd0

start size index contents

0 1 PMBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 2097152 1 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11aa-aa11-00306543ecac

2097192 2097152 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11aa-aa11-00306543ecac

4194344 3902834784 3 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11aa-aa11-00306543ecac

3907029128 7

3907029135 32 Sec GPT table

3907029167 1 Sec GPT header