Can I recover my Time Capsule data? Panicking!!!!

I have an airport Time Capsule that suddenly stopped showing up in Finder and now says "internal disc needs repair" in airport utility when I connect the time capsule to my computer with USB. Otherwise the utility does not find it. When I did this the first time, my "data" disk would show up under disks - partitions, in the utility, and would show how much free space there was. I bought a 16TB portable SSD to archive the data to, and when I connected to the time capsule today it now shows "Airport Disk" instead of "data" and just says "free" instead of "free" with an amount. Does this mean all of the disk was erased somehow? is there a way to check? When I click Archive, it doesnt give me the option to archive to the SSD. Is there anything I can do to recover all of my data on my Time Capsule?? My whole life was on there!

Time Capsule

Posted on Apr 6, 2024 8:18 PM

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11 replies

Apr 7, 2024 3:12 PM in response to Blairbear0716

At this point, you will have to look for an independent shop that can pull the hard drive out of the Time Capsule and take it apart to see if the data is still good on the disk.


Unfortunately, this type of thing is really expensive......you must usually pay up front.....and there will be no guarantee of success.


Wish there were better news, but this is really the only option left. If the shop is successful, you won't need to run the Archive, the shop can simply copy the data from the Time Capsule disk over to your SSD.


Have the shop also check to make sure that the SSD is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Apr 7, 2024 1:39 AM in response to Blairbear0716

There are really two issues here.


1) The Time Capsule disk "Data" is not displaying......likely because the disk has failed.


2) The "target" disk for the Archive that you want to perform may not be formatted correctly.


The first order of business is to try to get the Time Capsule disk "Data" displaying again. The Archive process cannot run as long as "Data" is not displayed.


Try powering off the Time Capsule and leaving it off for a few minutes. Then, power the Time Capsule back up to see if "Data" will be displayed in the Finder.




Apr 7, 2024 3:31 PM in response to Blairbear0716

For the future always have more than one backup on more than one device. In my own situation I have three backups, one on Time Machine, one cloned backup (SuperDuper) and another cloned backup that I keep in my fireproof file vault and rotate once a month with the other cloned backup. Some even recommend keeping a backup off site, like in a bank Safe Deposit box. it all depends on how much you value your “entire life”.


It’s never a question IF a storage device will fail but WHEN it will fail.

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Can I recover my Time Capsule data? Panicking!!!!

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