Am I just unlucky?

Question

straycatcn Author

Level 1

32 points

Am I just unlucky?

in October last year I bought an Airport Time Capsule.

in December,, just a month later, it stops working and Airport Utility showed the internal disk needed repair.

I brought it in to the local Apple service center and they replaced it with a new one.

Now, just over another month later, the Time Capsule failed again! The same reason: internal disk failure.

It was ironic that, when I brought it back for repair, the staff asked me if I had backed up my data!!

The whole reason for my AirPort Time Capsule is to have a reliable backup, or do I need a backup of the backup??

Is ATC really that unreliable??

Posted on Feb 9, 2016 12:20 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 9, 2016 12:26 PM in response to straycatcn

Your local store can have a bad batch.. it has happened.

The hard disk in the TC was a particularly poor seagate model.

Frankly I think you need to get your money back and wait for the next model to come out. In the meantime, buy a USB drive, which is faster, cheaper and much more reliable for backups.

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Answer 2

Pmintz25

Level 4

2,058 points

Feb 9, 2016 12:28 PM in response to straycatcn

Did they replace the hard drive or the whole ATC?

If multiple drives die in the same unit, then the unit itself needs to be replaced. There could be an internal problem causing the hard drive to overheat or get too much power, thus damaging the hard drive.

For the most part, the ATC is pretty reliable.

Getting an external drive you can plug into the computer is going to be faster though.

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Answer 3

straycatcn Author

Level 1

32 points

Feb 9, 2016 12:39 PM in response to Pmintz25

They replaced the complete ATC with a brand new one. It is the latest 3TB model.

I guess they will replace it yet another time, but it shook my confidence in the product.

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Answer 4

straycatcn Author

Level 1

32 points

Feb 9, 2016 12:46 PM in response to Pmintz25

I am running an external Thunderbolt RAID 5 drive for storage of my different files (audio, video and pictures) and I am using ATC to just back up my internal Macintosh HD, I am not that worried about speed for the Time Machine backups.

(Running an iMac Retina 5k)

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Answer 5

Feb 9, 2016 1:06 PM in response to straycatcn

It is the latest 3TB model.

The 2TB would be better.. strangely enough.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPort+Time+Capsule+A1470+%28Mini%21%29+Teardow n/15067

If they used the 3TB ST3000DM001

There is a good story worth knowing that goes along with that particular one.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure/

Most people buy the 2TB and it is not as bad. My first TC .. 3TB lasted a week.. the replacement was just poor.. slow. I got rid of it. The third one I got a 2TB .. it is slow but has been reliable.

I am running an external Thunderbolt RAID 5 drive for storage of my different files

A nice big (3 or 4TB) USB3 drive will be the best replacement.. partition it and use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a disk image that is bootable.. this is the very best recovery you can have.. then use the second partition for TM.

You can plug a USB drive into airport extreme but that hasn't proved any more reliable than the TC.. and it is hard to get USB drives that behave themselves on the end of the network.

Hopefully Apple will release a new model soon as the current airports are well overdue for replacement.

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