What is an Apple Time Capsule?

Airport Extreme and Time Capsule are different products with different model and part numbers.

The Extreme never has had and cannot be changed to Time Capsule by installing a Hard Disk.. Apple did make the boards slightly different to ensure nobody could pull that trick.

If you wanted a Time Capsule.. return the airport extreme and purchase a TC.. you will be fully refunded if you bought from most stores within the normal 14day change of mind limit.

You can plug a USB drive into Airport Extreme so it is able to store files or Time Machine backups.. albeit the results are very poor speedwise.

The internal drive in the TC is much better option if you want TM backup to network target.

It’s an AirPort Extreme with a hard drive built into it, and is configured the same way or through the Time Machine pane of System Preferences.

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It's a wi-fi base station and Time Machine backup device:

Mac - AirPort Time Capsule - Apple