So I decided to try and improve my backup situation. I have Time Machine running on my iMac connected to an external drive, this works fine for one computer, for two it's not ideal. So I decided to look into getting a NAS of sorts. The obvious choice is Time Capsule, the only problem with Time Capsule is for the amount of backup space I'd need it's prohibitively expensive.

With a budget of around £160-170 in mind I decided to look at some alternatives to Time Capsule. The first NAS I came across courtesy of Liam Daly was Iomega's Home Media Network Drive. In a recent update Iomega in combination with their EMC Retrospect Express software enabled Time Machine to work with the drive. This was great but from what I could tell it was really no different from getting a cheaper NAS and using the various hacks to make it work. It also bugged me having to install EMC Retrospect Express. Then another friend pointed out I could use the Airport Extreme Base Station and connect an external drive to it. This was great in theory but the disk performance on the AEBS is supposedly really poor. The second issue was it still meant I had to buy a enclosure and drive for it.

I currently had 1.5TB of storage space in my Icybox enclosure, 1 x 500GB disk and 1 x 1TB. I thought wouldn't it be just as easy buying Time Capsule, taking the 500GB drive out and putting in my 1TB disk so this is what was done. I made sure I got the latest MB764 model as I was also looking to improve wireless performance. It's getting pretty bad with the number of routers around me.

First I started by removing the rubber foot from Time Capsule. This was easy and straightforward. Taking a tip from a YouTube video I used a hairdryer to warm up the glue, this made removing the foot super-easy.

The next step was to remove the 10 screws found on the bottom of the drive, once done the metal plate was easily removed, watch not to brake the cable connecting the fan to the main circuit board. I recommend you twist the metal top round so it's not glued to the desk you're working on! 

So let's recap, so far we have removed the rubber foot from the Time Capsule, then removed 10 screws from the bottom. I should really have annotated a photograph with which screws to remove, but this blog post wasn't planned during the take-apart of it!

The next step is to remove the existing hard drive, I grabbed the disk from the side and was then able to lift it up and remove the SATA power and data cables. 

Now the hard drive has been removed Time Capsule is pretty empty inside.

Before adding the new drive, take the old drive and remove the 4 mounts. When the metal plate on the bottom is replaced the 4 grey rubber rings go around these mounts to help reduce vibration and keep the noise coming from Time Capsule to a minimum.

Now all thats left to do is to install the new drive, this was just a reverse of removing the original, once in place all that was left to do was install the temperature sensor. Luckily for me it was never stuck down very well to the original drive, also the new drive I installed (Western Digital 1TB Green) had the same external shape as the original so it could be placed in the same area.

With the drive replaced all thats left to do is put the top back on, screw in place, stick back on the rubber foot and format the disk. Armed with the hairdryer again I warmed up the glue again to ensure it bonded well with the rubber foot, this should mean it wont be falling off anytime soon! 

Have a look at more of the photos over on my Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbeattie/sets/72157621478164583/