Time Capsule Powered Off, Won't Power Back On

Still more and more stuff which is irreplaceable is in the form of electronic files only.. that is scary.. all those photos of weddings and kids and important events.. all gone with a tiny fault.. 2 capacitors in a power supply.

Ray... I have not seen one HDD that has died as a result of the TC PSU cooking itself to death.

HOWEVER, I have seen EVERY HDD become inaccessible as a result of the TC PSU cooking itself to death.

The TC dies and the HDD becomes trapped in an expensive (but beuatifully scuplted) paperweight... etc etc.

When my first TC died, and left me high and dry, I too created a secondary backup of a 2TB WD external hard drive being copied to, daily, with SuperDuper. A tertiary backup I use for critical stuff (almost everything really) are nice cheap SD cards, into a USB card reader. These are kept safe, away from the house.

Cheers,

Chris F. YORK, UK

www.fackrell.me.uk

I have seen several hard disks dead.. mostly wd.. some blacks from Gen2 .. Plenty of Greens from Gen4..

I have not seen a hitachi but a couple of seagate from gen1 and a spinpoint from gen3.

It is a lot hotter here.. than the UK.. this summer has been a shocker.. whilst you are under ice and snow.. to record levels we have had the hottest months on record. Plays havoc with uncooled TC's.

I switched out two bad capacitors a couple of months ago and it still working fine. My concern was the heat will destroy other components and eventually fail again. I read about modifying the built-in fan so it can be on all the time instead of never. But then I decided just pay $15 for a Microsoft laptop cooling base (amazon, see link below); remove the rubber base of the TC and have it sit right on the cooling base. The fan in the base keep the TC running cool. I am proficient enough to do the fan modification thanks to those nice step-by-step posting. But for $15, I rather spend the time playing with my kid. The base looks not bad at all! You may even get the white one to match the TC.

Just be aware:

It won't be as quite as before since there wasn't any fan action from the TC before. I probably won't put the TC in the bed room now if you do so previously.

The base is powered by USB. So you need to have a powered USB nearby. The USB on the TC is not powered.

Just a note that the rubber base is to electrically isolate the TC. due to power regulations.. the TC is mains powered but not earthed.. so it is not allowed to have any metal exposed. I have also ignored that, as the supply is highly unlikely to short to frame of the TC and make it live. It will blow up before that happens. Mostly!!

Overall that is why the design is wrong.. it should be powered just like the airport extreme.. with a 12v external power supply and then have a big heatsink on the frame.

I have a new method of turning the fan on.. it is very simple and I am in the process of writing it up.. basically it takes 10min and two parts .. a green led and a 100ohm thermistor. ( although there is nothing wrong with the 33ohm or 39ohm resistor in the line).

So here is a pic. of the modified fan.

This gives a better view.

+ lead from LED to the bottom.. cut into the 5v wire to the fan.. cut the control wire so the fan will work.

Then I will coat it with silicon putty to hold and insulate everything.

You need a 3mm Green LED.. this one will not self start as I used a 5mm high output green.. the voltage drop is a little too great. And a standard NTC 100ohm thermistor soldered across the LED.. this will reduce resistance as the TC heats up and the fan will speed up.. but you will need to run the fan permanently as the initial start resistance of the fan needs to be overcome. The thermistor is deliberately put into the output stream of the fan and the fan will collect half the air from internal TC space.. this prevents self heating of the thermistor.. otherwise you need a much bigger one.

More details shortly.

Just FWIW, my 1st gen TC died during a power outage in my apartment in Beijing. Everything powered back up when the electricity came back except the TC. I've had it for almost 4 years so I guess I've been lucky until last week. Went to the Apple Store in Beijing and, obviously it was out of warranty but I need the wifi and with the 2T newer capacity, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new one. The Genius at the Beijing store was great. He told me to bring back the old one and they would try to get the data off it if they could. Went back yesterday and they took the old TC to the back. I came back an hour later and they had extracted the HD. It still worked and none of the data was lost. They connected it to a spare external HD I had brought along and we got the data transferred over. While I was sitting there wwaiting, I had the bright idea that maybe with no more HD in it, the power needs of the old TC were less so we plugged in the now HD-less old TC and, voila....it powered up and the amber light started flashing. Within a minute, the old TC showed up on my iPhone as an available network! So I took it home, turned it on and again it powered up and showed up in the Airport App. Within a minute, I had set it up to extend the new network on my new TC. There is a blindspot in my apartment, but now I've got full coverage thanks to the old TC wifi function still working. Off to buy an enclosure for my "new" now external TC HDD today. So not a total loss. Still have the functions of the old TC, only in two pieces now.

it will not last very long.. the power supply will continue to get worse until it doesn't work at all.

They sell replacement power supplies on ebay.. from HK or China, although they may not sell internally in China.. They are $50US aprox and you are the better Delta brand supplies.. Grab one and you can put a larger drive back into your TC.

And I have added the page on the fan mod that I posted earlier above.

https://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modem s/apple-time-capsule-repair/apple-time-capsule-fan-mod

This will keep it from dying again fairly quickly which they seem to do.

I had the same problem as most...TC mysteriously wouldn't get power any more regardless of the outlet I used. I was told Apple would not work on the machine and I could get a replacement for $250 to which I promptly replied that I could get a Belkin for a fifth of that price which would last me three times as long as this TC did. I was really beginning to become an Apple guy after growing up on PCs, but this experience has me seriously reconsidering. It's really something that needs to be dealt with when over 1000 people are having the exact same problem with a product. SMH.

buy 2.juli 2013

end of TimeCapsule on 13. September . 2013 ➖

top quality !!

Another Time Capsule Done ~ 3 years & 4 months ago I puchased the 1TB 802.11n Time Capsule which suffered a complete power failure today in the midst of normal use with no warning whatsoever .

My T.C has never acted up or not performed and has givien no warnig sign, So What now ..

My Serial # is 6F9411NT2UP

T.C. 1TB 802.11N ALL FIRMWARE IS UPDATED .

I have 2 computers and over 3 years of data business & personal now unaccessable .

I am a large position $AAPL shareholder & investor relations profesional who is less than just a bit peturbed about this.

Come to find out everty ther sucker who bought one of these tanks got screwed as well.

Any help out there $AAPL ?

Apple do not help .. they will replace TC under warranty.. but yours is over 3years.. they will never help recover files.

You should never use the TC to store files btw.. for just this reason.. it is a sealed unit and apple will do nothing.

But of course you can unseal it.. remove the hard disk and put it in a holder with USB and plug it into your computer.. as long as the failure is not the hard disk .. and a 3year old will be Gen3 most likely and it could have a bad disk.. !!

To get the disk out neatly.. see http://www.ifixit.com/Device/Apple_Time_Capsule

It is not hard.

Repair of the Gen3 TC is a bit tricky.. I can fix them in Australia and Chris fixes them in the UK but I am waiting to get someone in the US. The Gen3 power supply is likely ok but the board has faulty capacitors.

You can see the info here for what goes wrong.

https://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modem s/apple-time-capsule-repair/new-issue-with-a1355-gen-3-tc

If it is a very early Gen4 A1409 then it is probably a similar fault but none have got into my hands yet.. but I think yours will be Gen3.

Same issue here. Gen 2 TC died quietly in the night. Taking apart the TC was easy; installed the HDD in a external enclosure. Using Windows 8.1, Disk Management sees the external TC HDD, but does not assign a drive letter and all options other than delete are grayed out. I don't think Windows recognizes the file format even though Windows 8.1 recognized the TC as a network drive when the TC was working properly I need to recover the data on the TC HDD. Any suggestions?

I don't think Windows recognizes the file format even though Windows 8.1 recognized the TC as a network drive when the TC was working properly

The TC normally functions as a network drive and a Windows machine "sees" the drive as FAT32 over the network.

Since you have the drive connected directly to your PC, the PC cannot read the HFS+ format of the Time Capsule drive.

There might be a Windows application that you could install that would allow the PC to read and write to the HFS+ formatted drive. We'll need other users to post with details if they know about this.

Find a friend with a Mac so you can actually read the drive..

You can load HFSexplorer into windows.. but I suspect you are not going to have an easy time of it.

Ask a friend with a Mac laptop to come.. plug it into your network and then share the computer over the network and you can pull the files across the network.

Ok, just for the statistics, my 500GB 1st gen Time Capsule have finally broken after 79 mo (that's 6 years and 7 months).

Not sure if it's a broken power supply, since it still holds power for a few seconds then powers off. But there's a chance the power supply is not driving enough power though.