Time Capsule 3TB Went down

[sowza1]

Hello,

My 3 TB time capsule just went down and I'm curious what other people do to back up their Macs. I was backing up to Max and had some movies that I was able to access on my Apple TV. I'm looking for a new solution. My only thought is to buy a used AirPort Extreme and connect a hard drive to it but wanted to find out what other people do. I am not really interested in paying for a service to use a cloud, but I would like it to be wireless. So I don't have to think about it.

Would love to hear your thoughts and thank you

 

[Bigwaff]

Very easy to replace the HD in Time Capsule device.

Apple Time Capsule Repair Help: Learn How to Fix It Yourself.

Repair and disassembly guides for Apple Time Capsule wireless network devices.

www.ifixit.com

Many YouTube videos as well.

 

[VitoBotta]

If the unit is completely gone, not just the hard drive, there are many NAS units to choose from that work with Time Machine. For example, I use an AsuStor NAS. It’s quite affordable and works very well.

 

[Brian33]

My only thought is to buy a used AirPort Extreme and connect a hard drive to it

This might work for you, but you should be aware that it will stop working in a future version of macOS.

It's been announced that the version after macOS 26 Tahoe, probably releasing around the fall of 2026 and probably called "macOS 27", will drop support for Apple Filing Protocol (AFP -- not to be confused with APFS). All of the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme file-sharing capabilities require AFP to share a disk over the network and the disk will not be accessible from any Mac running macOS 27.

So, an external plugged into an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule would work for, say, one to three years, depending upon when/if you update your Mac.

For wireless backup of my portable Macs, I have an old 2012 Mac Mini running headless (no monitor) in my basement, with a few HDDs connected. Using macOS file sharing allows Time Machine to backup the laptop to the Mac Mini's drives. Acting as a file server doesn't take much cpu power, so even a quite old Mac can handle the duty. And the loss of AFP support in macOS 27 won't affect my setup because even old Mojave can do file sharing with SMB.

 

[sowza1]

This might work for you, but you should be aware that it will stop working in a future version of macOS.

It's been announced that the version after macOS 26 Tahoe, probably releasing around the fall of 2026 and probably called "macOS 27", will drop support for Apple Filing Protocol (AFP -- not to be confused with APFS). All of the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme file-sharing capabilities require AFP to share a disk over the network and the disk will not be accessible from any Mac running macOS 27.

So, an external plugged into an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule would work for, say, one to three years, depending upon when/if you update your Mac.

For wireless backup of my portable Macs, I have an old 2012 Mac Mini running headless (no monitor) in my basement, with a few HDDs connected. Using macOS file sharing allows Time Machine to backup the laptop to the Mac Mini's drives. Acting as a file server doesn't take much cpu power, so even a quite old Mac can handle the duty. And the loss of AFP support in macOS 27 won't affect my setup because even old Mojave can do file sharing with SMB.

Great to know, thank you. Posting this has giving me some leads and also speaking to Apple. Appreciate it. I think I may do a NAS HD set up that is compatible with Time Machine. Thanks again!