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Hi there, Is it possibel to replace HDD in 5th gen Time Capsule without loosing any data? Will the cloned HDD work properly? Thanks

Yes, it will work. Take out the drive and image it to the newer drive using disk utility (restore).

Sorry the answer is no, you can’t clone the Time Capsule drive to a second drive externally of the Time Capsule. You can copy off the files from the Time Capsule via your computer onto an external drive connected to your computer. Then once you copied off your files you can remove the drive place a new drive in (larger drive) then using the AirPort Utility reformat the drive. Once its prepped up via the AirPort Utility you could then copy back to the new drive your files you held temporality on the external drive you had connected to your computer.

Two years late into the conversation. But, I replaced my 3TB Seagate drive that was in the TC with a 5TB drive (7200). I noticed my backup speed did increase. However I just upgraded it again with the “what the heck…let’s do it” attitude. This time I bought a ‘WD EasyStore 8TB external ($149 at Bestbuy) and shucked the case to extract the WD Red 8TB drive. I placed it in the TimeCapsule, formatted it with Airport Utility and pulled the archived data from the 5TB drive. It picked up where it left off and now it is backing up three Macs. One note though. The Red is significantly slower in backup speed. At the same time, the TimeCapsule is running cooler than it did with the 5TB seagate.

The 5th generation Time Capsule contain a 3.5" HDD!

I just bought from a friend an AirPort Extreme 3TB Time Capsule. It is A1470 module. I’ve made a complete check up and it is in a good condition and everything is working. It is replacing an older AirPort Extreme 4th gen. A1354 that had an USB hub powered hub and two external USB Hard drives. Those hard drives mounted on my network as normal hard drives (not time capsule). I tried to make the same thing on the new Airport, to have the 3TB Time Capsule and the other 2 HD, each one working independently, but I could not do it.

Am I doing something wrong, or it can’t be done?