light stays orange

Solid amber or blinking??

Blinking is not an issue.. something has gone funny in the network.. just reboot it.. but the led blinks for trivial reason.. open the Airport utility and find out the problem.

Solid amber.. sorry.. that is bad sign.

Reboot the TC.. and put your hand on it .. feel for the disk to start up.. if the disk fails or you feel it attempt and fail.. then the disk is dead.. next move is hard.. and expensive.. you really should not be storing files on the TC.. it is a backup target not a file store.

How old is the TC?

You cannot do anything with the disk in the TC.. it will have to come out. Place in usb cradle and connect direct to a computer.

Apple will replace it if still in warranty.. but they toss your data away without even attempting to recover.

There is a 12month standard warranty .. then TC comes under applecare of a computer, if it was purchased within 2years of the TC.

Your TC has a dead hard disk.. take it to the genius and see what they will do for you. But they cannot offer data recovery.

Maybe a silly question but what do you mean by place it in usb-cradle?

This is a USB cradle.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/USB-2-0-3-5-SATA-Hard-Disk-Drive-External-Case-/19038 3863707?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item2c53c3379b

There is 100,000 of them on ebay. It is called a caddy, external case, box, cradle, what have you.

You can get bare cable versions.. no box just a power supply and a usb to sata adapter cable..

Plug the TC disk into that and the USB into the computer.. then you will probably need some tools like diskwarrior or data rescue. But if the drive still doesn't spin up then the drive itself is dead.. it will have to have expensive repair by recovery specialist who can change the controller or even at the last straw remove the platters.. this is done in a clean room or clean box and will set you back thousands.. !!