Time Capsule - internal disk error

Anyone who has had a Time Capsule hard drive that has failed or is failing has seen this issue. Hard to know what the real numbers might be though, since Apple is very secretive about things like this.

Personally, I've had two Time Capsules that developed hard drive issues after about 5 years.

If you have AppleCare in effect on one of your Macs, and the Time Capsule really is less than 3 years old, Apple will normally replace the Time Capsule with a refurbished unit at no charge. The "rules" can be tricky, so check with Apple Support for all the details if you think the Time Capsule might qualify for replacement.

Unfortunately, Apple will not help with transferring your data on the old Time Capsule to the replacement, so if your Time Capsule is still operational, you would want to copy the data on the Time Capsule hard drive over to a USB drive as soon as possible to preserve your data.

Apple made a bad choice of hard disk for that model. Seagate must have got the contract with super cheap price.

Yes the problem is fairly common.. particularly the 3TB model.

Do shut down the TC overnight or for several hours.. start it up cold and see if you still have disk error. If so and you have no warranty then you can pull it apart and replace the disk. Plenty of instructions around the net. The TC will continue to work as Airport Extreme.. maybe if you don't put in a disk at all. This is DIY job that is not easy and for most people the results are not great. It is better to pull the drive .. so people cannot recover your Time Machine backup unless you encrypted it. Sell the rest for parts on eBay and buy another router plus a different target for Time Machine.

Understand your frustration, but all hard drives will fail. The question is when, not if.

Folks who cannot afford to lose a backup make two sets of backups, even more sometimes. For example, using Time Machine the Macs here back up to a Time Capsule, and they also back up to a USB drive that is connected directly to the Mac.

In addition to Time Machine, I also back up the Macs using Carbon Copy Cloner, which is another backup application which is more reliable than Time Machine in terms of problems. Too many users are seeing the message that you see below appear all too often on their screens.

My wife thinks I'm nuts for being too safe with backups, but I can live with the guilt.