Time Capsule disconnects every few days

You are in luck.. flash it to 7.5.2 firmware.. it was much more stable. Some people even prefer 7.5.1 but that was never available on Gen 4 to the best of my knowledge.

Apple changed loads of stuff with Lion and the 7.6 firmware and the result was not impressive.. and grew worse in ML.

Mind you for domestic equipment 7-10days between reboots is pretty good.. you really need commercial grade routers to get better.

Do you power the TC from UPS? My experience is routing equipment is extremely sensitive to power .. all network equipment should be UPS powered.

If the above doesn't work.. the horrible but rather common solution is electric clock timer.. power off at midnight.. power on at 12.01.. every day. Works.

Some routers gave up being stable.. and put an automated timer inside.. and even some commercial equipment uses a watchdog timer for when things lockup.. to quietly and without affecting uptime, reset the cpu.

Your ISP may also rotate IP at that time.. some routers do not cope with it. That is why commercial internet is static IP not dynamic.

GAIG.. sorry.. this is the new Apple..

BUT study the logs, you should see what the issue is when it trips over.. but Apple have cut you off from any real diagnostic tools or ways of working out the problem.

You generally need low level telnet access to the firmware. And the chances of Apple providing that to you.. Zero, Zippo.. Nought, none..

Bypass the TC and see what the modem does.. maybe the modem trips which causes the TC to trip.

What IP lease length is set and where.. is the TC router or bridged or worse possible, join wireless network.

Flip things around.. if TC is router.. bridge it and use another router. If it is bridge, set to router and bridge the modem if at all possible.. write down each experiment.. ie be scientific about it.. see which combo is the problem.. or if all of them are.. and it still happens with no TC.. then it is ISP issue.

I expect you should have an answer in 6-12months if you stick at it.

That is why the problem is ignored.. when it drops out on an hourly basis you can do something.. but every 7-10days.. impossible without extensive testing.

reluctantuser wrote:

Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding some of your response.

GAIG??

Good As It Gets. (You used the term!!)

How do I access the logs?

logs are in advanced area of v5 utility. there is no access to logs in the v6 utility.. I guess Apple thought that looking at logs was beyond the average users ability so no longer needed in new slick interfaces.

Use v5 utility.. if you run Lion download it.

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482

If you are on Mountain Lion.. then you will need to trick it to install. Download and install and run unpkg.

http://www.timdoug.com/unpkg/

Download the 5.6 utility from reference above.. open the dmg file to see the pkg file.. AirPortUtility56.pkg.. drag that file over unpkg.. it will create a new directory on your desktop. of the same name.. drill down, Applications, Utilities. There is the real utility.. drag it to your main Applications Utilities directory. Ignore completely the toyland v6 and run only 5.6.

"is the TC router or bridged or worse possible, join wireless network." - Are you saying joining a wireless network may fix it or that being in one may be the cause?

Thanks.

You have not provided any indication of the network layout. If you want to pursue this I need full info..

Is the TC the main router or in bridge mode?

What broadband do you have? What modem? Is it a router?

Have you tested with the TC out of operation.. with another router?

Give complete details... that way we can narrow down the issue and work out if the TC is in best possible mode.

The worst mode as I indicated above is join wireless due to wireless being flakey at any time and TC not the most stable. This will be slow, although ironically the other problems might stop.. who knows unless you try it.

What OS is your computer running? If you are on Mountain Lion, well join the club.. this is a major issue and I doubt there is a solution.

But you can start by setting SMB names.. short, no spaces pure alphanumeric for everything.

TC name ... TC

Wireless names.. different for both bands. TC24ghz TC5ghz

Hard disk share name.. Data

If the TC is the main router set very short lease time for dhcp.. 20min. and see if that improves anything.

Just thought I'd mention it in case it's helpful.

It is contra to what I suggested but that is fine.. My experience and yours doesn't have to match up.. and therein lies half the trouble..

I certainly see issues.. I fix a fair number of Time Capsules and it is the same on all of them. But different Computers have different ethernet and drivers.. and although Apple does a good job of hiding it, the reality is some people have severe issues where others have none.

I am having a similar problem. My Time Capsule crashes with a solid amber light after running fine for a period of 1-6 days. This has occurred with firmware 7.6.3, 7.6.1, and 7.5.2. I turned remote logging so that I could view the logs after a crash and there is nothing appearing in the logs beyond the normal activities that occur during the duration of uptime.

I'm beginning to suspect some kind of intermittent hardware failure, but would appreciate any other clues.

john+apple wrote:

I am having a similar problem. My Time Capsule crashes with a solid amber light after running fine for a period of 1-6 days.

Solid amber is serious. There are only a couple of events that cause solid amber.. one is hard disk failure and the other is failure to finish the bootloader.. It is different to the fault reluctantuser was talking about.. his is flashing amber.

If it has ended up solid amber and wiped logs it has probably reboot.

That may indicate power supply.. how hot is it getting when it fails.. does it fail in the middle of backups or something?

Exactly what model is it.. A1xxx from the rubber mat will help.

It is hardware fault for sure. You cannot get solid amber led without.

Is there any faults in the TC you have ignored.. particularly a SMART fault in the hard disk.

Thanks for your input.

I see no indications of any problems with the hard disk. Clearly it finishes the bootloader given it runs fine for several days. Why do you say there are only "a couple" of events that cause solid amber? Why couldn't other types of hardware failures cause this?

The model is A1254.

John

Because the front LED is controlled by the processor.. solid means the processor has stopped. It is locked up and finished. Any other fault and the LED will blink and send a message to airport utility of the error. Once locked the processor is no longer able to send anything.. LED is solid.

Anyway your A1254 is simply old and is having power problems.

All Gen1 will have power problems. It is inevitable. They run too hot.

And the 500GB drive which was the only server drive ever put into a TC.. although they claim that every TC has a server standard drive is now starting to fail in numbers. The 1TB don't tend to fail as much as run extremely hot.. with the overheat the power supply packs it in.

Fix or replace.

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

Interesting, although I can't say you have completely convinced me.

Well unfortunately the only way for you to prove me wrong is to link to the TC via the serial console. Since that requires soldering in very fine wires.. that even I can barely see.. I guess we will never know.. but i am happy to be proved wrong.. anyone who is prepared to solder in the wires and actually link to the console is a brave brave person and any help in getting more info out of the Apple firmware would be of enormous help.

The pin outs are on this page.

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

For now.. lets say you open the TC and disconnect the hard drive and tell me what happens.

Hi, I'm not trying to prove you wrong, just trying to evaluate whether such a specific diagnosis is warranted based on available evidence.

Will the TC run as a router without the hard drive? If I could pull the drive and end up with a working Airport base station, that might be a useful outcome. A long time ago I became frustrated with slow NAS performance of the TC and installed a different solution. I've been barely using the storage capability of the TC.

Yes, you can remove the Hard Disk and it will be a AEBS.