Time Capsule Hard Drive Format

Trundle · 26 Dec 2018 at 16:15

Hi all,

I have a surplus to requirement Apple Time Capsule with a 1TB WD Black installed inside it. I no longer need the unit but thought I would make use of the HDD - however, I can’t for the life of me work out the format of the drive to make it be recognised by another device.

I was planning on putting it inside a Synology NAS, but can’t seem to get any life out of it.

To my knowledge, the hard drive is functioning correctly; but clearly there is some more advanced security element to the drive which I can’t get past.

MagicBoy · 26 Dec 2018 at 17:27

You tried just nuking the drive?

"Clean" it using Diskpart in a Windows PC. That'll remove everything and set it back to how it left the factory - a blank drive with no partitions defined.

Trundle · 26 Dec 2018 at 18:13

That’s the thing - I can’t see it in Disk part at all, but when the drive is inside the time capsule it functions absolutely fine.

MagicBoy · 26 Dec 2018 at 18:15

"list disk" in diskpart doesn't show the drive?

Trundle · 26 Dec 2018 at 19:51

Sorry, Yes I can see it as "Disk 6" but it shows as 0B in size and free. "select" disk 6 and clean just shows it as saying "there is no media in the device"

Cob · 27 Dec 2018 at 22:10

Boot from a Gparted usb stick or CD and delete the current partitions*. Windows will then recognise the drive in Disk Management.

* Be sure to delete the correct drive!!!