Safely Reset Time Capsule?

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Level 1

9 points

Safely Reset Time Capsule?

I am a support tech for hundreds of mac clients in my area. Personally, I see the eminent danger in having a hard drive that can fail tied to a router, which can also fail. If either fails, you either have a really heavy router, or a hard drive that cant be connected to anything without being removed from its casing. They are still too new to know how this will be handled in future versions, but let's hope people wont have to take these in to be able to swap out a drive as a home user, which is easily achieved in most external drive situations.

Several clients of mine have purchased Time Capsule already, and I have set many up in an array of configurations that seemed to work well, some for longer than others so far. There are several issues, such as wireless drops, WAN internet drops, and the gambit of normal issues someone could experience with any router.

The problem is this: across the globe, if any home or business user calls their ISP and has no network connectivity, which is a common scenario especially with PPOE, the FIRST thing and ISP will say is to disconnect the power from the router and reset it. I have spoken to every ISP available and this is common practice.

There is no power button on the time capsule, and no eject button on the macs connected to it.... So I am assuming apple was smart enough to build an auto disconnect and safe spin down procedure via a small battery into it somehow specifically for when you pull the power cord from it abruptly to reset it. That is the only option other than going into airport utility, which is NOT what ISPs tell people to do, and there is no clear warning on the Time Capsule itself. LOL. (I really dont think they did plan for this, but I would love to be told they did in this topic, otherwise the designers were really not thinking this out). I would hate to think that almost everyone who has purchased this device will have hard drive failures if they are unknowingly backing up to the drive via time machine on any computer in the network and the ISP asks them to reset it by pulling the power cable!)

I already fried one of my normal external drives when Leopard locked up permanently and there was no option but to hold down the power key on my MacBook. Thank you Leopard!

Can anyone put me at ease and say Time Capsule is not the next big blunder? I have a hard time switching out a good airport extreme, Dlink, linksys, or any other router for a client with something I am afraid of that seems to have a lot of potential problems. Sure it will earn me money when these fail as I will have to go help people recover their lives, and hopefully their memories. But I am a person of integrity and would like to recommend the right option before I plug in any more of these. I couldn't find all the answers easily browsing around so I leave it up to you to answer this for me!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.6), 2.16 Duo

Posted on Mar 15, 2008 7:48 PM

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Answer 1

niehanse

Level 1

9 points

Mar 16, 2008 2:07 AM in response to ronch

Hei
I see your point, but you sure have another Time Machine backup disc on a safe place outside your home? 🙂 I looked in the manula which tells you the is a reset button

30 Chapter 4 Tips and Troubleshooting
If Your Time Capsule Isn’t Responding
Try unplugging it and plugging it back in.
If your Time Capsule stops responding completely, you may need to reset it to the
factory default settings.
Important: This erases all of the current settings and resets them to the settings that
came with your Time Capsule.
To return your Time Capsule to the factory settings:
m Use something pointed to press and hold the reset button until the status light flashes
quickly (about 5 seconds).
Your Time Capsule resets with the following settings:
Â Your Time Capsule receives its IP address using DHCP.
Â The network name is reset to Apple Network XXXXXX (where XXXXXX is replaced
with the last six digits of the AirPort ID).
Â The Time Capsule password is reset to public.
If your Time Capsule still isn’t responding, try the following:
1Unplug your Time Capsule.
2Use something pointed to press and hold the reset button while you plug in your Time
Capsule.

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Answer 2

ronch Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 16, 2008 1:47 PM in response to niehanse

I dont want to reset it to default settings. I am talking about resetting it so it re-connects to the PPOE connection as ALL routers on the market occasionally drop and this is the procedure to reconnect. I can't believe this but since I posted this question last night, today a client has called me and screwed up his time capsule because the internet dropped and he had to pull the plug to restart it. Now his time machine wont back up any more. He gets an error because just as I had guessed, time machine was probably in mid backup when he pulled the plug as it usually is backing up hourly on an active users machine. EXACTLY what I was afraid of. I am afraid every time capsule will have this issue rendering them useless or dangerous to use if you really want a true backup.

Message was edited by: ronch

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Answer 3

LazloB

Level 1

0 points

Mar 21, 2008 1:20 PM in response to ronch

Hey, folks...

How about a reset function that reverts the unit to pre-7.3.1 firmware?

7.3.1 bricked my TC...on 10.4, 10.5, XP SP2 and Vista machines.

Since 7.3.1, only 10.5 sees it during setup config...then loses it by the end of the config process saying it can't be found. Windows boxes give me an error 6752 (or 6753?) when i try to configure find the TC by 'Configure other.'

Apple support was of no help at all, and even told me that they don't support problems UNLESS you're using the TC as a wireless base station connected to your modem/ISP. Funny. It was part of my mixed wireless network for a week and a half and worked beautifully (until 7.3.1). AND the Apple website touts the fact that it SHOULD join an existing wireless network--but tech doesn't support it.

Anyone have any ideas re: reverting the TC back to previous firmware? (I've tried the Option/Check for updates trick--it still won't install the previous firmware.)

Otherwise, anyone want a pretty white brick for $300?

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Answer 4

Oct 12, 2008 9:24 PM in response to ronch

In contrast to the above report, I have done this today (pressing and holding reset button) without losing the backups; all that was reset were the network connections. Being interrupted in the middle of a backup "should not" lose the backup structure; the current (partial) backup should simply be thrown away the next time around... though nothing is certain in this world.

Nevertheless there have recently been some problems somewhat like those reported in this thread (and others): dropped connections that don't reconnect; very slow backups (12hrs) for none of the well-known good reasons (eg initial backup, or deep traversal).

In my case it seems to be linked with my having manually configured a WDS-style setup with an Extreme as master, the TC as relay and an Express as remote. "Linked" means only that the problems started when I did this, and seem to have gone away since I have undone it, reverting to the wizard-style "extend my network" settings (whatever that means).

All the software/firmware is right up-to-date (as far as I know).

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