I've could get a larger HDD for my AirPort Time Capsule, currently on 2TB.

Or, turn one of the Raspberry Pis I have lying about into a backup system,
with an external 2.5" drive.

I'm a bit surprised how expensive 3.5" HDDs are. GBP 60 for 2 TB now, and GBP 50 more than 10 years ago. And I am sure this has been explained to me before, but why are USB external drives cheaper than bare drives?

Daniele

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David Kennedy <[email protected]> wrote:

On 13/06/2025 08:03, D.M. Procida wrote:

I've could get a larger HDD for my AirPort Time Capsule, currently on 2TB. >>
Or, turn one of the Raspberry Pis I have lying about into a backup system, >> with an external 2.5" drive.

I'm a bit surprised how expensive 3.5" HDDs are. GBP 60 for 2 TB now, and GBP
50 more than 10 years ago. And I am sure this has been explained to me before,
but why are USB external drives cheaper than bare drives?

Daniele

Wasn't there something in this weeks announcements about support for time capsules being discontinued?

Next year.

<https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/10/macos-27-wont-support-airport-time-capsule/>

--
Cheers, Alan

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Alan B <[email protected]d> wrote:

David Kennedy <[email protected]> wrote:

On 13/06/2025 08:03, D.M. Procida wrote:

I've could get a larger HDD for my AirPort Time Capsule, currently on 2TB. >>
Or, turn one of the Raspberry Pis I have lying about into a backup system, >> with an external 2.5" drive.

I'm a bit surprised how expensive 3.5" HDDs are. GBP 60 for 2 TB now, and GBP
50 more than 10 years ago. And I am sure this has been explained to me before,
but why are USB external drives cheaper than bare drives?

Market segregation - they can get more money for drives that go into servers than they do for consumer drives. Also the consumer drives can be slightly lower spec / warranty / etc.

Sometimes you can shuck a USB drive and find a SATA drive inside, but some
are USB-only (not sure if that's 3.5" now or just 2.5")

I imagine nobody is buying 2TB HDD now (2TB SSD is approaching parity,
cheapest Gen4 NVMe on Scan is £88 and 50x faster) and the sweet spot for HDD has more TB. After all, HDD are a great hunk of metal and metal has not got cheaper.

Daniele

Wasn't there something in this weeks announcements about support for time capsules being discontinued?

Next year.

<https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/10/macos-27-wont-support-airport-time-capsule/>

AFP has been deprecated a loooong time now, so no surprise.

A third party NAS that supports SMB is another option.
But a RPi-based NAS gives you more flexibility, if not such a nice
enclosure.

Theo

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On 13 Jun 2025 at 09:18:48 BST, "Alan B" <[email protected]d> wrote:

David Kennedy <[email protected]> wrote:

On 13/06/2025 08:03, D.M. Procida wrote:

I've could get a larger HDD for my AirPort Time Capsule, currently on 2TB. >>>
Or, turn one of the Raspberry Pis I have lying about into a backup system, >>> with an external 2.5" drive.

I'm a bit surprised how expensive 3.5" HDDs are. GBP 60 for 2 TB now, and GBP
50 more than 10 years ago. And I am sure this has been explained to me before,
but why are USB external drives cheaper than bare drives?

Daniele

Wasn't there something in this weeks announcements about support for time
capsules being discontinued?

Next year.

<https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/10/macos-27-wont-support-airport-time-capsule/>

Well thank you, that's one question answered!

Daniele

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On 13 Jun 2025 at 13:07:56 BST, "Theo" <[email protected]> wrote:

A third party NAS that supports SMB is another option.
But a RPi-based NAS gives you more flexibility, if not such a nice
enclosure.

I don't particularly care about flexibility; to be honest, what I want most is reliability and something I can plug in, get going and then forget about.

But I also hate the way that anything one buys seems to be destined to be thrown away after a few years, because even though it's still working perfectly, it has been made obsolete.

At least a RPi plus external disk is easily repurposed. In fact I have a ten-year-old RPi 2 here that will do the job perfectly well.

Daniele

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