iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015), 16 GB RAM, 1TB Fusion Drive but booting 11.6.2 from a Samsung 1TB T5 and using the Fusion Drive as a SuperDuper backup.
I’ve switched away from my 11 year old (A1409)/15 year old (A?) Time Capsules and have an Asus Mesh WiFi up and running. I was hoping I could continue to use the 2TB and 500MB disks in the Time Capsules for Time Machine backups simply by connecting them via Ethernet, but I have not been able to make that work.
I plugged the A1409 in to my iMac and the disk shows up in Finder under Locations where I’d expect it to, and I can log in to it and view the data, but when I go to Disk Utility to reformat it, it doesn’t show up. It does show up in AirPort Utility and I can erase the disk there, but it also doesn’t show up in Time Machine Prefs as a possible disk for backups.
Also, is there a way to turn off the WiFi radios so they don’t interfere with the new network? When the Time Capsule is powered up next to my iMac it definitely affects my WiFi connection to the Asus, even though the TC network is not selected from the WiFi/Networking Prefs.
Or, is the best solution for repurposing the TC HDs to buy powered enclosures for the HDs, and yank them out of the Time Capsules. (Not sure this is financially worthwhile, and I have other TM backups for the data on the TCs.)
Can you plug the Apple devices into your new router with ethernet cables? That way, the new router would give the Time Capsules internet addresses on your local network. You would want to turn off the routing feature of the Apple devices so they show up on the same local network.
Airport Utility (Mac or iOS) should allow you to turn off wifi on the Time Capsule.
In my experience Time Capsule hard drives can only be reformatted by removing them from the TC and putting them in another hard disks drive. That is the end of the TimeCapsule and is only a way to reuse the hard drive.
I use a TimeCapsule A1470 with TimeCapsule Wi-Fi turned off (using Airport Utility, as noted by @mpainesyd) for Time Machine backups over ethernet. I wish I had hints to help you make it work, but it is certainly possible for me to do what I think you’re trying to do.
You do have ethernet enabled in System Preferences > Network? (Yes, you must, since you said the disk shows up in Finder.) FWIW, my TimeCapsule does not show appear in the Finder under Locations, but its disk is shown in Locations > Network. I don’t know if that’s what you meant, nor if it’s significant if what you see is different.
Also, Airport Utility offers to let me erase the TimeCapsule disk (although I do not see any option to reformat).
Missed this earlier, but I wouldn’t recommend spending any more to keep 11- and 15-year-old hard drives from Time Capsules online. They’re just too old, and you could buy vastly more new storage instead.