Are Apple Time Capsules out of time after a year and a half?

*sigh* I remember reading the articles on this when the story hit a month or two ago. At the time I figured they were isolated incidents, the usual rantings of folks who happened to have bad units.

But now...

Add my name to the list. 1TB Time Capsule purchased 25 March 2008. Used to backup an iMac and MacBook Pro. Dead 19 Nov 2009.

I guess I should be glad it made it past the 18 month mark. Tomorrow I call Apple to get this sucker fixed, as I still have AppleCare on the iMac. Hopefully they can recover my files, as I had quite some backups on there.

I'm one of the unfortunates.
My google "time capsule power supply died" got me over here...

Hopefully the'll replace mine...

Go figure, my TC just stopped working this morning and it is just shy of being 18 months old. Will not power up. I have Apple Care on my iMac so I will see what Apple is going to do about this.

Just woke up this morning to a completely dead 1tb Time Capsule. It was working perfect last night however the grime reaper visited some time between 11:30 pm and 6:45 am this morning. The time cap exhibits no signs of life at all when plugged in to AC.

This Time Capsule 1 Tb edition was purchased in April of 2008

Called Apple Support they were able to register it against my Mac Pro that has Apple care and because I located 75 miles from the nearest Apple Service Center of any type they are shipping me a replacement.

Of course I must return the dead one and Apple will place a hold for $277.98 on my credit card just in case I do not return the brick.

There are no files that I cannot live without on the Time Cap and I'm lucky enough to have a spare (very old) router that I have returned to temporary service until Apples replacement by "mail" process completes.

I do wonder what would have happened if I did not have a machine with Apple Care they could register the Time Cap against as well if there had been files on that I had to recover what would have happened?

So it seems as of this moment the path of least resistance to getting your Time Cap replaced is to be sure that you have one machine in your covey that they can register the Time Cap with plus if you can live with out those files then do it. BTW I will degauss (big electro magnet) the Time Cap from the outside before I return it just for my own security. I will not open the device.

Best of luck to any of you that experience this same situation. I truly like Apple hardware and software. Apple is a well designed and thought out system. However if you ever have to deal with their designed for dummies service and support system please have your wallet ready and plenty of patience.

Apple Support is rather fickle. I never know what to expect. I must admit the magic words "Apple Care" make the difference. Stay away from their service bay at the Apple Store if you are not under warranty or do not have Apple Care at all costs. You will be treated as a leper.

If you ever have to deal with the "big headed", "self important" so called "experts" "by appointment only" aka the "Apple Genius" in the Apple Store it is an encounter that I will never have again. Its funny that the Genius's are located in the Apple store at the Genius bar. That's where they should be. They all seem to be drunk on their own importance and knowledge.

If there really is an expert in the Apple store then it is no wonder why they are behind 3 levels of secured combination locked doors. I have never found an Apple Genius that can logically debug a machine. From what I have seen they simply shotgun the parts till it works. If you have a machine that has a small ding or dent on the tender aluminum case then good luck convincing the first "Genius" (impersonator that you will deal with first) that the outside of the machine has nothing much to do with the inside of the machine. The cosmetic inspection process is an out of control customer losing situation that Apple Service executives need to squelch before the customers finally catch on and drive the retail stores out of business.

As conducted now this cosmetic inspection is a mind game that the so called tech or "Genius" has been well schooled in (either through formal training or as I suspect from OJT. It appears to me as a customer as a game they play among themselves to generate the big fish lies to brag about in the break room.) It has developed into a game of cat and mouse that most of the time the customer loses by implied allegations and the we're to good for you attitude.

APPLE wake up you will in the long run lose the game too just like Gateway, Circuit City, CompUSA and other retail failures. Try training your tech "Genus's" in debug and basic service and stop playing the mind games that insult technical experts like myself. You might be able to convince grandma that a scratch on the battery caused the logic board to go bad but not me. Let's remember you can't judge a Mac Book by its cover but it is easy to see through your "Genus".



MT Hall
Electrical Engineer

Add another dead TC to the list, and my call to Apple Support didn't get me anywhere. They claim to not know anything about this issue, despite 14+ pages of discussion on their own support forums.

Taking it to a store tomorrow, but not expecting anything more than disappointment.

I can't believe it. I read this article 2 days ago and today my time capsule went bye bye. It's exactly 17 months and 20 days old...

What I would love to know is whether Apple has ever improved the case design, or if there are modifications that can be done, like cutting slots in the case ala Airport express, or a small fan inside, etc. I'd love to get a refurb or used model, but now I'm wary. I was lucky I got outbid on the one on eBay last week.

The high failure rate is more due to Apple's "style police" than cheap components. The real problem is that style trumps engineering at Apple, so you get a box that's too small with not enough ventilation because that's what looks cool. I guess Apple has made a lot money due to their obsession with style, but I'd prefer boxes that were a bit larger and not so compromised in terms of reliability.

Mine did the same thing, 2 weeks before the warranty was up. Looks like I just got lucky. Apple replaced the unit; I hope the same thing doesn't happen with this new one.

And to those claiming the users weren't monitoring their time capsules, here's how mine went: One day I woke up, went to the computer and realized my network was missing; checked the time capsule and realized it was off. The firmware had updated the day prior so I figured this was related. I unplugged then re-plugged. Things went okay that day. The next day everything seemed okay until halfway through the day—the power dropped, and from that point on it wouldn't power on again. I tested multiple outlets (and a second time capsule power cord) to no avail. This wasn't a gradual failure. The power supply went from business-as-usual to brick in under 48 hours.

For those plagued about how to recover data on a dead time capsule while being able to take Apple up on a return:
A friend had almost the same exact issue with her Time Capsule, the only difference being that if it was left unplugged for a few hours it would power on for about a minute before dying (this only worked only a couple times). When she brought it to the Apple Store they said they could replace it (it was only 6 months old), but she had a few important files that only existed on the TC. The Apple Genius told her something along the lines of, "There are some businesses who might be able to recover your data by taking this thing apart. If we can't tell that it's ever been disassembled we replace it." She went out, bought an appropriate hard drive enclosure, then went to work extracting the HDD. She found some instructions online detailing how to upgrade the TC HDD, she followed these (requires a hair dryer). She installed the extracted HDD into the enclosure and moved the files onto another drive. Then she put the HDD back into the TC and closed it all up. No one could tell it had ever been messed with and Apple replaced it (with a newer model, featuring dual-band support).

This process must be done very carefully. One has to weigh whether recovering the data is worth the possibility of screwing up the re-assembly and being out a replacement TC. For her, the risk was worth it, and she walked away with both.

wow i read this article this morning and my time capsule died a good 8 hours later.....amazing