Time Capsule - Overheating or not?

The TC should be warm.. 105F is not too hot. I measure around 40C with the disk spun down.. in 21C environment.. it is temp above ambient that is important.. so 20deg C rise is ok but you would not want more, as it will rise again during intensive backups.. it can generate a bit of heat.. but as soon as the disk spins down it should cool off dramatically.

Make sure the TC has lots of space around it.. and put it up off the bench.. use pencils or erasers or bottle tops or real rubber feet.. whatever.. get it up off the surface as a lot of heat is trapped underneath. Alternatively a good solid aluminum laptop cooler as a base to conduct away some heat.

3. this is my backup for 2 devices..., how much redundancy do we need..., do I need another Time Capsule, just in case??

You can never have enough backup and redundancy but another TC is not the way to do it.

Buy a USB drive and plug it into the TC and do backups to that.. or even better, plug it directly into each computer and use CCC or one of the other cloners and make a disk clone.

I had a first generation 500 GB Time Capsule power supply failed due to overheating, I think. I have removed the Seagate Barracuda ES hard drive, and want to retrieve data. Can I get an external power supply for it? How do I do this? Thanks!

Yes, you go into any large computer store and buy a USB to sata disk holder. It will come with a power supply.

You plug that into your computer and you can get your files back.

You can also do a search on ebay for "Time Capsule power supply" and there are several sources selling them.. or alternative kits which may present better value as you have a working TC then to sell off.

Perfect! Thanks so much!

OK I got the disk holder and everything installed as expected. BUT when I turned the power on, the LED power light glows for a second and then goes out, and the hard disk does not spin up. Is the HD shot? Do I need to take it to a disk recovery service?

Thanks!

OK I got the disk holder and everything installed as expected. BUT when I turned the power on, the LED power light glows for a second and then goes out, and the hard disk does not spin up. Is the HD shot? Do I need to take it to a disk recovery service?

If the disk fails to spin up, then I would say it is dead.

We tell people constantly not to use TC as a NAS because it is unreliable and cannot back itself up.. if all you have on it are backups then I would not waste your money with recovery.. if you used the TC as a NAS.. and do have files you must recover then yes, it will need to go to a recovery service.. expect the cost to be as high as $1000 .. is it worth it?? And often the data is a chopped up mess.. certainly TM backups will probably be corrupted and not worth worrying about. If the controller is blown.. as is often the problem the repair may be cheaper.

Hi Mr LaPasteague;

I tried hooking up my hard drive with the USB>SATA disk holder again, and now it is powering up and the disk is spinning. However, it does not show up on the Desktop of my MacBook Pro. Can you help?

Thanks for all you advice.

Phil

Unfortunately not all USB holders work the same.. some do require you to format the drive.. I recently bought one that works like that.. Most are fine but I guess you might need to read up instructions that came with the holder if the disk will require a format. Clearly you do not want to do that.

Next step is to check the drive with disk tools.. does the disk show in at all in disk utility.

There are actually three partitions on the disk.. two tiny ones and the main data one.. do any of them show up?

If you have lost format on the data partition then you can get a recovery software.. disk warrior is the standard one but data rescue 3 seems a better one to me.. you can download a free demo .. it will do everything except recover the drive so you will know if the $99 fee is worth it.

No, it's not showing up in Disk Utility. I looked at Data Rescue 3 and could try that, I guess.

The other weird thing is I restarted my computer with it plugged in via USB, and with another external HD running thru Firewire. The startup screen freezes immediately(no Apple icon appears) and I get a weird low frequency hum thru my external speaker setup.

Thanks for all you assistance!

Phil

The drive can spin up and still be dead you know.

Disconnect the Firewire drive when you test.

I would also test it on a PC.. you can use HFSexplorer which is a free utility to view HFS format drives in windows.

Something is really wrong with the drive and if it doesn't show up in the computer then it isn't going to work.

Note also that it would be much better to use sata directly from the computer.. Apple never made esata sadly although there was esata cards for the mac pro available. USB are certainly problematic at times.

BTW I have seen a few dead ES 500GB drives now.. they are coming to the end of their life. You may simply be wasting your time.