Time Capsule Read Only

yes, i'm having a simular problem.
I have the TimeCapsule password stored in the keychain.
After a sleep TimeCapsule is beeing mapped, but without any access. A small red minus is shown in the TimeCapsule icon.
Only remapping helps.

Looks like a bug to me...

Unconsoled said:

How do you remap? I reset to factory settings and started again but it says the disk can not be repaired. Has the disk itself gone bad?

Click to expand...

You could always try erasing the disk in AirPort Utility. It'll mean that you'll lose your current backups, but it might repair this problem. Also (and this could be nothing to do with it) but I read somewhere that long names for your TC HDD could potentially be a problem. I was having problems left right and center with mine, but I renamed it, erased it, reset time capsule, added the network manually back on my MBP and now it seems to be working great. Mind you that was all in the span of last night so we'll see how great it continues to work after I reconnect my MBP tonight.

Good luck! Seems like Apple has a lot of kinks to work out with their latest invention...

I have the same problem after about 30 days. Any ideas?

Do your Time Capsules names have apostrophes in them? Which is usually the default....like Kevin's Time Capsule?

Also, how long is the name.

The two things I've been reading about are people you kept the apostrophe in the name, or that have very long TC names.

Not sure if it's true, but maybe a few searches you can find some more info on it.

Also not sure what happens if you rename your TC now. Do you have to start over?

-Kevin

I reset my unit and all was fine. The Time Capsule itself is great, but using with a MacBook Air makes it more difficult to manage because I cannot connect the Air (didnt buy the USB device) directly to the Time Capsule.

Same thing on an external hard drive

I had the same thing happen to me on a Fantom 1TB Megadisk, after using Time Machine on it for 4 months and accumulating around 400GB of backup data.

The drive would only mount as read-only, started making noises (usually indicative of a failing drive) and Disk Utility could not repair the drive. I used the drive for both Time Machine and file storage, and was able to migrate the data from the drive.

In fear that the drive might be going bad, I purchased a 1TB Time Capsule, but discovered there are no utilities to migrate my 4 months of TM backups to it. I therefore started new with Time Capsule and erased the 1TB Fantom in Disk Utility.

The Fantom drive now passes Disk Utility verification and does not make any loud sounds. I plan to run a more detailed disk verification on the Fantom Drive for peace of mind. After erasing the drive, I did find this article explaining how to use fsck_hfs to repair HFS file system corruption on Time Capsule. This problem appears to be a little more common than I thought.

Thank you and success

I had the same problems. My time capsule worked for a few days, then it wouldn't. Eventually, I started getting the same error messages:

"The backup volume is read only. To select a different volume, open System Preferences and choose Time Machine."

"The disk... is not repairable by this computer. It is being made available to you with limited functionality."

So, I erased the time capsule, reset to the defaults and renamed it "TC" (short and no apostrophes), and it appears to be working. Of course, I have to backup my entire hard drive again, but it is better than not being able to do it at all.

iSight got me again

THis happens to me when I forget to disconnect the iSight camera.

possible answer to read only Time Capsule problem

Unconsoled said:

I am having a problem with my new Time Capsule. Everything was fine for the first two days. Then last night it wouldn't connect and came up Failed every time. I was able to go back in time and see all my stuff since the last backup but couldn't add to it. It did it the third time I tried but very slowly.

This morning I tried it and I am now getting these two error messages:

"The backup volume is read only. To select a different volume, open System Preferences and choose Time Machine."

I set it up and have been able to write for the last few days until last night.

The other error says something like "The disk "Brendan Chase's back up of MacBook Air is not repairable by this computer. It is being made available to you with limited functionallity. You must back up your data....etc"


What is going on and why was it fine and then not fine?

Click to expand...

TRY THIS - rename the sparsebundle to a single simple word with no punctuation in it. I did. And my TC is backing up now as I write this.

Time Capsule Read Only Error

s2nami said:

TRY THIS - rename the sparsebundle to a single simple word with no punctuation in it. I did. And my TC is backing up now as I write this.

Click to expand...

This solution worked for me and everything is OK.

Help Please!!

I am not too good with computer issues.... I am having the same problem with Time Capsule... Mine has not backed up in a long time. Today I received an update for Airport Utility, therefore i thought there were a few glitches that had been resolved. I am getting an error message:

The backup volume is read only...

I am trying as suggested above and I renamed my TC taking the punctuation mark out and as I write this, it seems says "preparing"....

I need some help getting my TC fixed and backing up again... Any suggestions?? I am a beginner and have no clue what I am doing..

Thanks!!!!

One answer to the problem

I'm no expert and have been utterly frustrated by this 'Read Only' problem with my Time Capsule/Time Machine backup but I think I've finally found out how to get rid of it. Anyway it has worked for me so maybe it will be helpful to others.

You need to go to Apps> Utilities> Airport Utility> Disks> and then make sure that either you are set up as a User or that the Airport Disk Guest Access is set to 'Read and Write' from the dropdown menu.

Then go to your Time Capsule in Finder and click on 'Connect As...' If you have set yourself up as a User, it will ask you for your password, otherwise you can just click on Guest and the connection should be made.

After I did this, Time Machine connected and began the backup without a problem. Hopefully it will continue to do so. Some bug has obviously altered all our settings to 'Read Only' so maybe it'll do it again but in the meantime, I hope this helps.

Possible solution

I created a forum account just to post this:

Issue:
I have a late 2008 iMac24 and a late 2009 Time Capsule 1GB. They worked flawlessly until a few weeks ago. As of then, Time Capsule is not recognized OR read-only OR Time Machine is stuck at calculating. All three errors appeared randomly. The only thing consistent was TimeMachine not making a backup.

I have been on the phone with Apple for a dozen of times in a few days to get my TC back to work again. Creating test users, deleting the entire contents of the TC (!) etc., nothing helped. In addition, the failed attempts to backup and System Preferences apparantly active/hanging as a result, I could not shutdown my iMac normally, only with the hardware button. Repeatedly doing so causes the Mac to boot with the QuestionMark in a Map, blinking. Getting it to start properly required to unplug mouse, network cable and plug in a wired keyboard. The Mac would the restart after 1 to 5 attempts........

Deleting the TC and approaching and setting it up as a new user made the TC approachable at least. I could add and remove stuff manually. Using Time Machine however, resulted in going back to the old status again (lockups etc).

Inspired by an earlier post in this thread and another one on a forum I don't remember, I decided to do the following:

Rename my iMac name from
iMac van Jeroen van der Schaaf > iMacJeroen

Rename my network from
Jeroen van der Schaaf's Network > NetworkJeroen

Rename my Time Capsule to TCJeroen

All new, short names, with no spaces or 'strange' characters like * or ` or / i.e.

After doing this, everything worked like a charm again. Although I chose to use short names this time, I do not suspect this was the issue - it had been working perfectly before, with the long names. I'm not really into networking on Apple, but it seems forcing all hardware to see the old stuff is not in their environment and 'new' hardware is present, and have it connect to each other forces some kind of fresh start or so, dunno. It drove me crazy so it seemed a good idea to post the solution that worked for me, hopefully it will help some of you.