Are some Apple Time Capsules locking themselves up for good?
By Donald Melanson 
posted October 6th 2009 8:02PM
posted October 6th 2009 8:02PM
A backup device that's not reliable is what some may consider a "very bad thing," but that's just the charge that a sizable number of users have been leveling at Apple's Time Capsule as of late, and the complaints aren't showing any signs of letting up. What's worse is that the problem being reported doesn't appear to be related to a firmware or software update, or some other configuration issues, but rather that the Time Capsules "just die" randomly -- most after a year or more. Judging from the reports on the official Apple forums, it also seems that folks are having hit and miss results getting Apple to fix or replace their Time Capsule, with some apparently able to get an out-of-warranty replacement and others faced with a $500 bill. So, has your Time Capsule bitten the dust? Let us know in comments.
[Thanks, Michael]
[Thanks, Michael]
Another quality Apple product.
That's Apple for you. Instead of making a quality SAN they don't have RAID and they have substandard hardware. My money is on the thing overheating or something since everyone knows that Apple hates putting a fan in anything.
Don't Apple fans buy new versions every year anyway? Life-cycle seems about right.
It just works?
After a class action lawsuit they may even actually recognize this problem.
@John: "Apple hates putting a fan in anything".
They've got enough fans already.
@John: "Apple hates putting a fan in anything".
They've got enough fans already.
say it two times and we'll think there are twice as many... ;)
all the failed drives are coming from the first batches. also, i don't know about where you are but in my area of LA finding a 1TB Time Capsule in stock is impossible. just on a lark i've been calling around every couple of days and no one has them. which makes me wonder if they temporarily halted production to investigate. potentially a good sign
Yes, I guess they intentionally brake your devices so that you can enjoy the newest awesome, super, very good, products. They are so good at it!!!!
I strongly believe they do intentionally lower their products quality so that you have to buy aftermarket accessories: cases, covers, headphones, etc... Much smaller companies like Sansa, uses rubber in their products back covers for instance to reduce scratches and cracks.
My history with Apple products is:
- All ipod cables sucks, the brake easily on the joints, every single one I got new with my iPods had to be replaced in 2 months or so.
- My first iPod, a nano 1st gen died within a month, I lost my warranty papers so could not be replaced...
- 3rd Gen iPod Classic. Battery past away after a year, replaced with an spare one, HDD died after 1.5 years.
- 2nd Gen iPodtouch, random lockups and shutdowns, at least one in a week, not heavily used.
Now, if I compare that with my Sony, Sansa, Samsung, LG, devices in which I never had a single failure. Apple is in very bad shape.
Ad me to the list as well. Don't remember exactly when I bought my 500GB TC but it was around March of 2008. I was very surprised when I googled Time Capsule will not power on and the Apple Support Forum came up with several pages of people with the same problem.
Apple has to be aware of this problem and just deciding to ignore it.
Maybe they will unlock themselves in 50 years....
lol
Yeah, on the bright side, Apple just gave you a $500 time capsule...literally.
Maybe apple has implemented the famous Write Only memory?
http://www2.vmi.edu/Faculty/squirejc/Research/IC_Datasheets/digital_cmos/Write%20Only%20Memory.pdf
I believe that's WORN - Write Once, Read Never.
Has to be user error, after all Apple doesn't make bad products right ?
They must have kept it under a lamp or something.
What idiots, seriously.
I bet they didn't BELIEVE in the time capsule's superiority over all other things natural and manmade, hard enough, so it die.
lol
Still working as well as the day I bought it. I attached a couple of external hard drives to it and it makes a great whole house media server in addition to a backup server.
Best of luck mate!
for the sake of discussion, what model is this, when did you buy it and where are you (general geographic terms). also has it ever get you any signs something could be amiss, major overheating, dropped signal for lengths of time when the actual internet (cable modem or whatever) was fully functioning.
Strange. Just a couple minutes ago I was thinking about how I need to take mine to the apple store.
I can access it fine, but every 3-5 seconds it locks up for a second, then resumes. This is most evident on my windows machine and when watching videos on either computer. The windows machine can hardly see any files (when previewing images [win7], only every 5th picture displays, and many get hung up on Loading..., locking up the preview window).
Luckily, I've read that if you buy a time capsule with your mac and you have applecare, it's covered.
the bonjour plugin doesn't really work well with windows 7. it's been causing NT Stop Errors for a lot of people, slow browsing, time outs, freezes, etc. Apple hasn't updated the bonjor / airport disk software for Windows 7 yet. it's rubbish really.
I honestly believed Bonjour.exe was malware until after removing it a few times, I decided to find out what the hell it actually was.
Why would they release software for an OS that isn't out yet?
Hey, engadget, this is a story worth following.
But you need to get the story reported. The discussions on the apple website all point towards one problem: the power supply. It fails.
This isn't about wonky wireless or about fritzy hard drives. those may be problems as well, but that's not the issue people are having.
As for me, 17 mos., and still alive. We'll see . . . (I just added some rubber "feet" to the bottom to give it an extra 1/4" or so off the desk.
@laxfan0930: Because most companies make software/drivers for an OS before it is actually released so people can use it as soon as the OS is released? Why WOULDN'T you make a driver for an OS before it's released, what do you want to make your customers wait for however long after it comes out to use your product? No, of course not. Smart companies do at least, Apple just doesn't care probably.
@tom that is what they did with itunes and vista. I do believe they went so far as to urge users not to upgrade to vista just because they never ported their music player/store in time.
Wait, a few hard-drives failed? why isn't CNN on this?!
They were, but their Time Capsule "locked up" and they lost 40 min of
news.... which included, you guessed it...
@ Fingal, The hard drives didn't fail. the Time Crapsules they were installed in failed. Why wasn't it on CNN? I guess this story isn't anywhere near as explosive as Apple recalling 1.8 million iBook and PowerBook notebook batteries that's why. ;)
It's a feature, right?
Another reason I avoid "The Apple"
that's right, because Apple is the only company who ever has hardware failures. suck it.
@ Devin Brown - Yeah, right? I mean, considering what you pay, at least it's a premium hardware failure.
Well I have had mine for 2 years strong. I guess thats because I have placed a Cooling fan below since I have had it. I did notice when I got it it gets really really hot so since then I had on and off connection issues. So I placed a fan under it and wow who would have thought the issues go away.
Just my 2 cents.
Anthony H.
The iFan accessory is available for $89.95
You can still put them all in the iRack.
Sorry it's old but still the best spoof about apple:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw2nkoGLhrE
@Percy
Yeah its old news, everybody is certainly more interested in the iRan now.
Not to mention Mackistan.
you guys cover this, and not the issue of apple not providing proper bootcamp drivers for their latest macbooks?
Just get the next gen one. That kind of thinking works for the iPods.
My 18-month-old Time Capsule died mid-August. Came home to no status light, no network etc. Completely dead.
Seeing as it was out of warranty I pulled out the hard drive and made sure my data was safe, which it was. After much deliberation, I bought a new one the next day, and then did a bit of investigating and found 2 suspect-looking capacitors in the power supply.
I finally sourced some replacement caps just recently and on the weekend a friend replaced the dead ones for me and it was a success!
I'm hoping Apple has switched capacitor suppliers since the first few batches (my dead one was bought when they first went on sale) Not keen on ripping open my new TC to find out.
I'm in Australia so this happened mid-winter, so I doubt it's a heat issue. Just seems like the caps are letting go after around 18 months.
Why should the consumer go to all that trouble to open them up and replace the capacitors? Replacing a poewr part isn't the easiest thing for everyone...hell, even opening up any device at all is well beyond any apple users user anyway.
Apple users tend to want every simplified, convenient, and trendy. They don't care about spending money, and don't think about keeping a product more than a year anyway. They'll just buy the next version when it comes out to stay with the times.
Mine just died in exactly the same fashion. First gen. ~18 months old, I come home and its just dead...no light, no burnout smell, no nothing. Pulled out the hard drive and waiting on a drive enclosure to arrive in the mail to retrieve my data (fingers crossed...dumped my iPhoto library there b/c old macbook was running out of space...moronic move to put all my eggs in one basket, i know.)
Never the less, it worked so well otherwise, I'm just waiting till the frustration wears off (...or anxiety of unbacked up data builds up) to buy a new one. Probably another month and I'll pull the trigger on a 1TB.
I like your keen sense of adventure to delve into the belly of a TC. I wish I had stuff to open up to see whats wrong. Good job.
Not really understanding the "it works great until it breaks" mentality here.
@tofug
I always see a bunch of comments that question why someone would say that a gadget that broke "worked great till it broke" and where you can't understand that attitude, personally I can't understand people that can't understand it.
Personally, I think about it with gadgets the same way I do any other type of product. I've had my current vehicle for 9 months and I have over 65k miles on it, thats a lot of miles in a short amount of time. I replace my vehicle every couple years and the previous two I had I could not wait to get rid of. This current one I am not sure I will even get rid of. It is the best damn car I have ever had and the first one that I actually like driving long distances in. I may get another one just like it if they still have the same model and pass this one to my wife or keep it for my fourteen year old son when he gets his licences in a few years.
To the point though, if the car's engine or transmission let go tomorrow and left me stranded in the middle of nowhere, I might be mad about the part failing but it would still be the best damn car I have ever been in.
Something breaking after 18 months of use doesn't take away anything from the item if it was a great piece of gear until then. In this case a external hard drive unit, I would be overjoyed at 18 months. In my office I've tried three compact NAS units and not one of them has lasted that long. The worst was a Maxtor 1TB RAID unit that the power brick failed on three times in a 6 month period and then the unit just died completely, but I had to make an old PC lying around into a Linux box just to stick the drives in and recover the files as Maxtor would send me a new unit but to get the data off the old one they wanted a couple thousand dollars.
Parts fail, and there is no amount of bench testing, QA inspections or burn in time will ever prevent it. I've seen $10k pieces of equipment delivered on a truck from the factory and be DOA when the day before it just passed factory certification testing.