Time Capsule Powered Off, Won't Power Back On

Count me in. 17 months - No power. Was fine in the AM and dead after work.

My Time Capsule just went out and I bought it also about 1.5 years ago. This is terrible. I am a huge Apple fan, buy one almost every year. If this is what it going to happen, forget the Time Capsule... I do fear though that Apple will have a class action against them very soon if they do not fix this problem. Apple wake up and smell the coffee please... fix our Time Capsules!

P.S. My wife thought she heard the door bell, a high pitched sound, guess it was my Time Capsule shutting off!

Count me in too....
March 2008 - 18 months

Dead two days ago...

😟

I was wrong. I bought the thing 1 year ago almost to the date... just past the warranty deadline... stinks... I need instructions on modding with a external power supply

Number 1 Mac wrote:
I was wrong. I bought the thing 1 year ago almost to the date... just past the warranty deadline... stinks... I need instructions on modding with a external power supply

External Power here.
http://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modems /apple-time-capsule-repair

But I have also done an internal power supply repair and another version of the external using a single voltage supply. Just follow the links.

Of course opening it voids any later recall or extension of warranty apple might offer... but replacement IMHO will have the same issue until they redesign the cooling in the box.

Same thing, etc., etc., etc.

I haven't read through every post here (yet) but assuming an odd 150+ of us (judging from the number of replies) have reported this problem in this thread alone, what exactly do we all think Apple needs by way of reason to assume this is wide-spread problem. Essentially all the early adopters of their product who bragged about how good it was to their friends who then bought more are screwed.

Seems the data isn't completely lost but that recovering it right now is risky if we want to partake in any refund down the line.

To add insult to injury, we all probably paid $500+ for ours when now it's only $300 (for a 1 TB).

Well said elroy. That is my dilemma. I could hack the thing open and repair it + salvage my 12 months of backups or sit on it in the hope of some kind of recall from Apple.

It's frustrating to say the least. I might try Applecare or my Amex Card for a refund.

Add me to the list. I tried unplugging time Capsule. nothing.. no lights.. I noticed a quick bit of power (green light flashes for an instant) not in the front of the unit, but in the area where you connect the ethernet cables.. then nothing.

sad to know a backup unit can fail so quickly when it is hardly even used.

Same story for me, too... 17 months and TC is dead, PSU dead. I'm an electronician, so I opened the box to be sure. The PSU is a cheap peace of chinese crap, that didn't withstand the temp inside... some caps are dead, but almost impossible to replace because components are sunk in some sort of rubber.

But no PSU can be ordered, nor at Apple, nor anywhere else... although it would take 2' to replace.

This is total scandal, for a company which talks about 'Green' IT... so when your TC's PSU is dead, throw the whole away, although board and disk are OK, ridiculous !!!

Furthermore, Apple says we should use the TC for backups... so, when the TC PSU is dead, the data is gone, too ?? Or what is Apple's plan at that point ?? There's no official way to get back to your data... that's completely unacceptable !!!!

This has been my last TC ever !!! This box is crap !

My TC died last night. Going to take it into the Apple store. I hope they do the right thing and replace it... Will let you know how that goes.

philippeannet wrote:
The PSU is a cheap peace of chinese crap, that didn't withstand the temp inside... some caps are dead, but almost impossible to replace because components are sunk in some sort of rubber.

I also thought that but the issue was not the power supply quality... actually the caps that died are good quality. It is simply poor thermal design... caps are not designed to last that long at high temperature. In fact the caps well exceeded their rated life to last 18months running 24/7.

You have a couple of ways around it... In Europe your consumer laws are stronger and the retailer is responsible and should replace it.

And it is infact possible to repair.
See http://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modems /apple-time-capsule-repair/apple-time-capsule-repair-type2
A number of people have successfully done it.

Cheers

Yesterday I went to the local Apple store to see a genius. He got the same results I did, told me how rare this problem is (yeah right), I pointed out to him the hundreds of posts in Apple's own forum describing this problem. He said I shouldn't trust what I read in this forum because many people that don't own the Apple products like to come on-line and say negative things about the Apple products. What unmitigated gall.

For such a "rare" problem, he quickly gave me a rote and apparently well rehearsed answer, which I summarize below:

"It is out of warranty. We can fix it for $499, and Apple will destroy/erase the drive. Or you can buy a new Capsule for $299 and keep the old Capsule, then you can remove the drive and put it in a disk enclosure and use it."

It really makes no sense. The out of warranty repair is $499 and it is really a swap and you don't even get your files back or have any certainty that critical information is safeguarded (banking, tax returns, etc.), or buy a new one for $200 less? Well, I certainly won't buy another one and suffer through this again 18 months later.

They tout the Capsule as using a "server grade" drive. The implication being that the mean time before failure should be something like one million hours, 18 months of actual operation is not acceptable.

Apple has set up no data recovery service for users of failed capsules to retrieve their data (backups and other files you may have stored there). Furthermore they are not owning up to the fact that it is a flawed design and hundreds if not thousands of them are failing prematurely. They could have put the power supply externally and cut down on the temperature rise, or improve the cooling and air flow. It's a case of aesthetics before robustness.

I have been a Mac user since the old SE and have championed the Mac inside my company, fighting the Windoze oriented IT department. I have even recommended the Time Capsule to others. I feel Apple has let us down on this product and they are doing nothing to correct it.

I like the network backup concept so if I put my 1 TB drive in an enclosure with USB output I'll lose that. I can try to rebuild the power as has been documented in this forum, is there another way to keep network backup capability with Time Machine, without a Capsule or an Extreme?

Message was edited by: Rudy(CA)

Rudy(CA) wrote:

I like the network backup concept so if I put my 1 TB drive in an enclosure with USB output I'll lose that. I can try to rebuild the power as has been documented in this forum, is there another way to keep network backup capability with Time Machine, without a Capsule or an Extreme?

As I understand it, there are NAS boxes which will allow time machine to do backups without perhaps some final checking...
And one alternative I have seen mentioned is using another mac... like a mac-mini as a file server. It should allow full time machine access.

The method is outlined in several posts.
+It seems that the limitation for Time Machine's ability to backup to a network volume is only a preference in the OS. They basically switch the option off, except for the case where you buy a Time Capsule.+

+its possible to turn this option back on, but its not supported by apple.+

+open your terminal and type:+
+defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1+

+Now any connected drive (NAS volume, network share on another computer, etc) show up as options in the Time Machine setup. The drive you point to does have to be formated as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) though (no windows NTFS volumes).+

From http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=450628

Same problem here. I took my TC to apple care and they made valid the guarantee, but they couldn't tell what was wrong with it.

But now my problem is that with this new TC i can't make backups cause the Time Machine doesn't find the TC, even when the light is green and i'm online through it......

I'm really disappointed at apple.

Thanks a lot for the information and for all the notes you have published with the modifications.
First thing for me is to extract the drive (hope it is still good), put it in an enclosure and save the
files I had stored in it. Then look at doing some of the modifications you've outlined (ie. external
power and fan). If the Time Capsule had more damage than just the power supply then look into a NAS solution.