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 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.
hey dennis, what car? i drive about the same amount and cant get a decent ride for the long haul each day. the line between nice seats and good gas mileage dont seem to match up often.
I put on a lot of miles too... My '06 Acura TL was pretty good, really good seats and 29 mpg on highways. I can't get past how they screwed up the new TL, though I hear the TSX is still nice. Now have an '06 BMW 330xi which is much more fun to drive and the sport seats are better for the first two hours, then they start feeling restrictive. Also getting around 29 mpg on highways. My personal ideal would be a 330d wagon which is not sold in the US :(
a year and a half is WAY too early for a "here, pay a premium price and store your life on this piece-of-mind device" unit to die.
I also think you're a little silly if you would still love a car even if the engine and transmission died at around 65k miles.... (if it was a known problem with all of the units shipped, like it is with THIS apple product at least... there's bound to be a lemon or two no matter the manufacturer). the point of transportation is to keep you safe, get you where you need to go, and do so efficiently and comfortably. if it died at 65k miles, it would have failed in that regard. just because it has comfortable seats doesn't mean that it's a better car than one that will last you 200k miles. you must have never owned a honda or toyota, you get comfort, style, efficiency AND reliability. maybe you should set your expectations higher.
also, sounds like you've had bad luck with your NAS products... but that doesn't mean you should expect a device that's only job is to hold data and keep it safe to fail... and maxtor? that was your own damn fault. they make shit products.
The Chromebooks are here, starting with Samsung's Series 5, a cute little number that promises instant-on access, 3G connectivity, and long enough battery life to web surf with the best of 'em.
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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.
hey dennis,
what car? i drive about the same amount and cant get a decent ride for the long haul each day. the line between nice seats and good gas mileage dont seem to match up often.
@ brewja
I put on a lot of miles too... My '06 Acura TL was pretty good, really good seats and 29 mpg on highways. I can't get past how they screwed up the new TL, though I hear the TSX is still nice. Now have an '06 BMW 330xi which is much more fun to drive and the sport seats are better for the first two hours, then they start feeling restrictive. Also getting around 29 mpg on highways. My personal ideal would be a 330d wagon which is not sold in the US :(
dennis, I think you missed the point.....
a year and a half is WAY too early for a "here, pay a premium price and store your life on this piece-of-mind device" unit to die.
I also think you're a little silly if you would still love a car even if the engine and transmission died at around 65k miles.... (if it was a known problem with all of the units shipped, like it is with THIS apple product at least... there's bound to be a lemon or two no matter the manufacturer). the point of transportation is to keep you safe, get you where you need to go, and do so efficiently and comfortably. if it died at 65k miles, it would have failed in that regard. just because it has comfortable seats doesn't mean that it's a better car than one that will last you 200k miles. you must have never owned a honda or toyota, you get comfort, style, efficiency AND reliability. maybe you should set your expectations higher.
also, sounds like you've had bad luck with your NAS products... but that doesn't mean you should expect a device that's only job is to hold data and keep it safe to fail... and maxtor? that was your own damn fault. they make shit products.