Time Capsule won't back

i hadn't seen the 'zero out data' option

Open AirPort Utility, select the Time Capsule and click Edit in the smaller window that appears

Click the Disks tab at the top of the next window

Click Erase Disk

Select the Zero Out Data option

Click Erase

This is going to take some time, so allow 6-8 hours or so for the process to complete.

seems strange as there isn't really an alternative i'd found. for auto back ups , local storage, setting up a network and a router function .

Apple was the only supplier to offer a router with a built in hard drive. Not sure why, but imagine that other suppliers did not see enough demand for this type of product to justify the expense and time for support.

Are apple expecting the people will go with cloud and that's the direction of travel for storage?

I can't answer for Apple, but would point out that Apple has not offered any means to completely back up the contents of a Mac to the Cloud. Seems they would have done so by now if they were planning to offer this feature.

Also I guess it's a HDD and might break at some stage jeopardising data stored on it

The Time Capsule has both upsides and downsides. The upside is that it is a one piece solution for routing and back up storage. The downside......if the router portion fails, you lose your backups.

Apple changed the format of the hard drives on Macs starting with Big Sur to a new format called APFS. But, the Time Capsule hard drive cannot be formatted the same way. So, if you are running Big Sur or Monterey on your Mac(s) and trying to back up to a Time Capsule, Time Machine must try to store backups of the Mac (formatted in APFS) on the Time Capsule (formatted in HFS+). Gosh, I wonder what could go wrong with this extra complexity.

The message indicates that your backup file has become corrupted. You will not be able to restore files from the existing backup.

To get things going again, and as the message indicates, you will need to erase the backup and start over again with a new complete back up of your Mac.

Countless numbers of users have experienced this issue since Monterey and Big Sur have been introduced. It appears to be a nature of the beast type of thing, related to a new hard drive format for Macs using Big Sur and Monterey, while the Time Capsule hard drive remains in a prior different format.

Hi there , i was looking for an answer to this issue also

so it seems time capsule now is just obsolete ? i have a new MacBook Air M1 with Monterey 12.1 and tried rebooting, resetting time capsule , deleting old back ups to no avail . Any further suggestions from anyone here would be very helpful as i cant think of anything else to do or try other than buying a new external hard drive . I'd imagine going into an apple store to seek assistance and resolution will be no use at all?

By "deleting old backups", does this mean that you used AirPort Utility to completely erase the Time Capsule hard drive using the Zero Out Data option?

If not, that would be worth a try. But, even if you can get backups going again, I would not recommend using the Time Capsule as your only backup plan.

The Time Capsule was discontinued in April 2018, so even if you purchased AppleCare at the time, free support ran out some time ago. You may need to pay $85-90 or whatever the current rate is now for advice that will tell you that there is not really much that you can do.

If the Time Capsule is 5-6+ years old, it's time to go with another backup plan.

Thank you Bob,

i hadn't seen the 'zero out data' option . I will give it a try.

I had seen they discontinued in 2018 - why, seems strange as there isn't really an alternative i'd found. for auto back ups , local storage, setting up a network and a router function ...

Are apple expecting the people will go with cloud and that's the direction of travel for storage?

Also I guess it's a HDD and might break at some stage jeopardising data stored on it