how to convert airport time capsule hard drive to external backup drive

Sir, since Apple has discontinued these products (Network related product, I suppose?), is it possible to buy another network drive (without the HDD), and plug my current HDD, and just resume using the backup in “sparsebundle.”

I'm not going to say that it is impossible, but having tried this in the past and failed after spending hours with the support folks who all said it "should work", I would not recommend that you try this.

Or can I plug my External HDD to the USB port of my router, and back up the same way I did using Airport Time Capsule? - sorry if this sound too amateur

Yes, if your router is an Apple router. And yes, if it is another router by Synology or Asus, since these products support Time Machine to a USB drive connected to the USB port. Most other routers will not support Time Machine backups to a drive connected to their USB port.

I hope Apple can develop a software to help Airport TC Time Machine users “backup/migrate” to local backup with ease, because I am sure all Airport TC users will encounter same problem sooner or later as the Airport Time Capsule ages.

Unfortunately, Apple has done virtually nothing in the way of support since they discontinued the Time Capsule and other AriPorts in April 2018, so......in my opinion.....I would not expect them to change their ways.

So, you removed the hard drive from the Time Capsule and placed into a caddy or enclosure, correct?

Is the caddy or enclosure connected directly to a USB port on your Mac? That is the only way that the device will act like an "external" hard drive.

If if the enclosure is not connected directly to the USB port on your Mac....... how is the enclosure connected to your network? Please assume that we cannot see your network, so things that are obvious to you are totally unknown to us. We'll only know as much as you can tell us.

When you plug the USB drive into a computer check the drive using disk utility.

It should have three partitions. Only Data is relevant.

Computers may not be able to connect to the Sparsebundle unless the disk is plugged directly to that particular computer.. but backups should not be done this way.. you should low level format the disk and start over if directly connected to computer.

If plugged into the TC it should work if it is working when you plug it into the computer.

Not all USB enclosures allow you to read a previously formatted drive so check this is working via Finder on a computer.

OK, thanks for the additional information.

Unfortunately, Time Machine backs up differently to a drive connected directly to a Mac than it does to a "network" drive like a Time Capsule. When the drive is installed in the Time Capsule, Time Machine backs up to special type of container called a sparsebundle. When a drive is connected directly to a Mac, Time Machine backs up in a normal way to normal folders.

The two types of drives are not interchangeable. So, you won't be able to continue backing up to the Time Caspule drive in the enclosure without some modifications.

If you value the data on the Time Capsule drive in the enclosure, you will need to try to first copy all the data on the drive over to another drive for safekeeping.

Then.....you will need to erase the Time Caspule drive using Disk Utility and set up a new Time Machine backup again, selecting the "new" drive and then copying everything on the Mac over to the "new" drive for the first backup. After that, Time Machine will back up "incrementally" to the new drive.

APconfig and APswap are tiny partitions used by the Time Capsule internally. They are only about 1GB.. the main shared partition is under ASRnewvolume.

If you wish to keep using this disk plug the USB back into the Time Capsule and make sure it is being shared to the network. You will need to reconfigure Time Machine to match the new URL.

Otherwise buy a new disk and keep the old one in a draw for archive of the old backups and start over with the new disk. This will work much better and you can plan properly to partition it into 3 roughly equal parts and use one for each computer.