Can a ME177LL/A be upgraded to a larger hard drive?

Yes, you can!!

There is however a lot of stuff you can do.. but SHOULD NOT.

The TC uses a standard seagate 3.5" drive.. but you can replace it with just about any standard desktop drive.. I recommend green .. WD green as a good choice.

See https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Apple_Time_Capsule

WARNING>> WARNING >> DANGER>>

The new TC uses surface mount connector and ribbon cables.. These are to put it mildly delicate. Tip over the TC .. drop out the hard disk and you are very likely to tear the cable.. tear the socket right off the board.. or damage something else.

I took these from the reference.. do you know what keeps that socket on that board.. 40 or so tiny solder connections.. knock it on a corner and there are only two or three connections that are holding the socket.. break one and it is dead.. there is no mechanical connection.. screws or pins through the board.. it is held by hope.. knock it.. and say bye bye TC. These things are designed to be sealed.. look at the old model and it is tough cables.

https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/BUvwqHQfK16pn6tj.huge

What experience do you have?? Let me suggest this is not for amateurs..

The older TC used wires and plugs and sockets.. They were solid.. nobody I ever heard managed to tear the socket off the board. They do on the Gen5 TC. So.. is this a good idea.. or should you just plug a USB drive into the TC and accept its slower speed.. or buy a cheap single disk NAS.. eg WD My Cloud and use that..

Edit....I see that LaPastenague beat me by a few minutes....even though he is "down under".

Unless you need a ton of storage, Apple offers a 3 TB version of the same Time Capsule.

It's a real task to get into the newer version Time Capsules without destroying them. This is probably by design.

I've tried this and would not recommend this to anyone who is not willing to lose a Time Capsule as a learning experience.

Maybe LaPastenague has some tips, but the bottom line is that the Time Capsule will practically self-destruct unless you are being extremely careful.

Maybe LaPastenague has some tips

IMHO don't do it.. simple eh!!

Buy a Gen4 TC.. plug it into the Gen5 by ethernet and run it in bridge.. you can put a 5 or 6TB drive into the Gen4.. it is just as fast.. and from this perspective a lot more rugged.

But I would buy a WD My Cloud. Or a Synology or anything..

I am running a Synology now and its speed beats the TC flat. Plus it is much easier on mixed network.. works absolutely fine for TM.

I can add disk after disk after disk to expand it. As I need more space..

Don't get more space by using slow USB .. if you want network storage space buy the right tool.

It is very simple.. so into the Synology management interface thingo.

Setup for TM as a folder.

Actually let me just reference it for you.

https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/tutorials/608

Is this what you wanted.. ??

My Synology is a hack one.. (Xpenology -- actually but same thing only faster and cheaper).

Plugged by gigabit into the network.. and the computers can access it anywhere via the network.. so it is pretty simple.. I have had it running for almost a year with no issues..

I happen to be running a restore to a computer for another thread to show how to do it.. the result is very good.

What do you think the difference in speed is between a TM backup and restore on an Apple Time Capsule versus a Synology NAS?

Difficult to give exact numbers.. your synology is a high end one. You should be getting full gigabit speed on read and very close to it on write.

That would make it about twice the speed of TC.. but I cannot confirm it easily.. If you restore to a spinning drive.. it will be much slower than to an SSD..

My restore was to a slow 2.5" via USB and actually I was pretty pleased to get 25-30MB/s but the TC should manage that.

That works out at 80GB/hr .. generally with the TC we manage 60GB/hr.

But that is pretty much the TC limit so to SSD you would do a lot better from Synology.

If I decide to move my TM operations from the Time Capsule to the Synology NAS, what should I do with the 2TB of hard drive space on my Time Capsule? Can it be used for anything else?

Sure.. I use it for my Carbon Copy Cloner backup.. at the moment..

TM is IMHO less than 100% satisfactory.. having a totally separate backup even if you only do it on odd occasions makes a load of sense.

I am not sure how you cracked the board.. the ifixit instructions warn about the fan socket.. and if you pulled it off the board it is not a serious problem.. the TC can work fine without a fan. Apple seldom turn it on .. you can improve the cooling other ways.

Anyway.. if you need internet buy a standard router today.. even an AIrport Extreme.. but I don't think the Gen5 TC is good value for money.. You can plug a USB drive into the Gen6 AE and use it for backups.. slowly.. which is fine for wireless clients.. you should not be using network backups for your desktop computers.. unless it is to the synology. A local USB drive is faster, cheaper and much more reliable than TM to a network drive.

but what about the backup speed via Ethernet? Is Apple using faster hard drives in the 5th gen TC?

No different. they are near enough to the same as splitting hairs.

Faster drives make no difference.. this is processor bound.