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Time Capsule died :(

MacBoobsPro said:
All the posts about TC dying has scared the shizzle out of me as I bought mine solely to stream my very large iTunes library around the house. I have now had to rush out and buy a back up drive as I am reaching the 18 month marker soon.

If it dies I'll be demanding a new one (hopefully the new model is ok?) from Apple as this is clearly a common fault and the product should not have been on sale.

The thread at Apple Discussions is amazing in that over the 32 pages there must be an average of 5 new dead TCs per page. It literally reads Post 1. Mines dead. Post 2. Mine too. Post 3. Mine died today etc.

Not impressed Apple!
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I'm not sure if the model is the same or if it's updated. I can't remember if the old TC had support for wireless N networks but this one does, you can make a 5 ghz only wireless N network which I don't really recall with the one I bought in early 2008.

So far it's performing the same as the other when I first bought it, but it still runs very hot.
 
I better check and see when I bought mine, seems to be 18 months and they are dead. I dont think it has been a year, but it has to be close. I better get applecare while I still can, just incase.
 
Can I even get applecare on my TC? I have a macbook but its 2 years old, i never got applecare on it. I couldn't find anything on the apple web site.
 
If you have any apple care program on an Apple brand computer, it will cover the repair of the Time Capsule. There have even been people in this thread that had success with getting it replaced by service reps, but that may be luck of the draw without Apple Care.

Also please note that there are many do-it-yourself fixes for the bad time capsules, which aren't actually that difficult if you are a little familiar with electronics (or know someone who is). Basically in the end, the Time Capsule is a hard drive with an Airport express and some other fancy stuff, but usually what goes bad are the capacitors and/or power supply, which are pretty easily replaceable. I think someone earlier in this thread talked about it.

You may find this link informative: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/nov/04/apple-time-capsule-failures-early

Interesting quote from one of the pages linked in the article (http://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modems/apple-time-capsule-repair/apple-time-capsule-fan-mod):

And Apple... listen to your Engineers... not just designers and marketing...or even SJ!! When looking closely at the design it appears the fan was intended to run with PWM variable speed control according to temperature. Otherwise the fan is actually drawing air in the wrong side. The fan should be drawing air in as per this mod, from the bottom. So in fact I did not modify the design as it was supposed to be, Apple did. They created a faulty flawed product design because someone didn't like fan noise.
How can Apple not measure the temperature rise in a running unit... how can you call it a time capsule... with an 18month lifespan. Due to altering an excellent original design it became a short-lived time bubble or time warp.
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Apple Replacing Mine

I bought mine ~19 months ago and it died today. Dead when I got home from work (no wireless!) and did a backup about 30 minutes before.

The good news is that I called Apple and they are replacing it at no cost. And I've never had Applecare for anything. I'm not sure if it had anything to do with it, but I do register my computers & maybe they just want to be nice to someone with an iPhone, 3 Macs and MobileMe (the guy on the phone knew about my month old mini, and sent the email to my MobileMe address & I never mentioned either to him. It does make me curious about what they think about the Hackintosh I registered!).
 
MY TC 1 Gig died today I bought it when it first came out as I pre-ordered it from Apple at the end of the Jan 2008 when they announced it. So i called Apple support and they claimed they were aware of the problem and said my serial number falls under the batch that Apple is repairing for free under warranty. So he offered me 2 choices. Choice 1 was he would ship me a replacement unit and I would have it in 2-3 day or he could make an appointment for me later today at my local apple store who will exchange the unit for me today. So I took option 2 of going to the store.

I got the to the store rep read the notes went in back for a sec and came out with a new version of 1 Gig TC with support dual band and says I am luck we don't have anymore of the older TC in stock so manager said to just give you one of the new TC.

Not sure if the stores are upgrading everyone for free to the new model or not or if they do have older TC in stock some of the times and I just got lucky as hell but either way I am very happy now as I don't need to disable my Iphone Wifi anymore when I got home anymore.
 
Hmmmm.


I have just bought a brand new one off Ebay, and this thread does not fill me with confidence :S


I bought a 500gb version. Does anyone know if this is 1st or 2nd gen, and do the 500gb ones go wrong?



James
 
Jamesl94 said:
Hmmmm.


I have just bought a brand new one off Ebay, and this thread does not fill me with confidence :S


I bought a 500gb version. Does anyone know if this is 1st or 2nd gen, and do the 500gb ones go wrong?



James
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500G is 1st as they discounted 500G in Jan when the new dual band ones came out. The 2nd gen dual bands only come in 1T and 2T models. I found the threat on the Apple forum too and it seems Some people with the 1T have been upgraded to new dual band model when stores have been out of stock of the older 1T 1st gen model but people with 500g are not as they are being told that would be considered an upgrade vs 1T to 1T is not considered an upgrade in apple mind.
 
dolmar said:
500G is 1st as they discounted 500G in Jan when the new dual band ones came out. The 2nd gen dual bands only come in 1T and 2T models. I found the threat on the Apple forum too and it seems Some people with the 1T have been upgraded to new dual band model when stores have been out of stock of the older 1T 1st gen model but people with 500g are not as they are being told that would be considered an upgrade vs 1T to 1T is not considered an upgrade in apple mind.
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Hi,

thanks for your response, you but have lost me :p

Do the 500gb ones have a problem?


James
 
Jamesl94 said:
Hi,

thanks for your response, you but have lost me :p

Do the 500gb ones have a problem?


James
Click to expand...

I can not say for sure the one you bought is one of the faulty ones. Only the 1st gen model produced from launch to a certain point have the sub par power supplies. Apple corrected the problem mid cycle.

Yes 500gb are first gen models so depending on your manufacture date/serial number your TC could in deed have one of the older power supplies or it could have one of the newer ones. Apple did not release the dates or serial range of the units that have sub par power supplies. You might want to consider calling Apple Care and tell them you just bought it at retailer and after reading the forums want to make sure the one you just bought has one of better power supplies.
 
dolmar said:
I can not say for sure the one you bought is one of the faulty ones. Only the 1st gen model produced from launch to a certain point have the sub par power supplies. Apple corrected the problem mid cycle.

Yes 500gb are first gen models so depending on your manufacture date/serial number your TC could in deed have one of the older power supplies or it could have one of the newer ones. Apple did not release the dates or serial range of the units that have sub par power supplies. You might want to consider calling Apple Care and tell them you just bought it at retailer and after reading the forums want to make sure the one you just bought has one of better power supplies.
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Hi, thanks for your reply again :)


What could I swap my TC for a different power supply if it went?

Also, if it did go, would my data be safe?



James
 
dolmar said:
500G is 1st as they discounted 500G in Jan when the new dual band ones came out. The 2nd gen dual bands only come in 1T and 2T models. I found the threat on the Apple forum too and it seems Some people with the 1T have been upgraded to new dual band model when stores have been out of stock of the older 1T 1st gen model but people with 500g are not as they are being told that would be considered an upgrade vs 1T to 1T is not considered an upgrade in apple mind.
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your slightly wrong they did make a dual band 500g but not for long. here it is refirb.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FB764LL/A?mco=MTA4MjcyODc
 
After seeing these failures and some personally experiencing these failures, it boggles the mind that you would still consider buying a new one :confused:
 
seedster2 said:
After seeing these failures and some personally experiencing these failures, it boggles the mind that you would still consider buying a new one :confused:
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Well, I had already bought it, plus you only get people moaning on the ones that don't work, not the ones that do.
 
Another dead TC

bought Feb '08. "Server Grade" hard drive died Jul '09. Replace the hard drive, was running flawlessly until Nov '09. No warning at all just flat out stopped, no power, no lights, nothing. It was on a UPS.

The replacement drive is fine, it's running on a USB/Sata adapter until I figure out if there's any way to replace the power supply.

The TC was really handy but not worth replacing, especially with the price of wireless N routers considerably cheaper than when I originally bought the TC.

If you are thinking of getting a TC also consider that the warranty is very short and Apple calling the HD "server grade" is just marketing Hooey. If you buy an enclosure and buy naked drives you can get them w/ either a 3 or 5 year warrant for the same quality drive.
 
Data retention in dead TC

Have seen many questions re: retention of data in event TC dies.

Mine just did. Don't have Applecare but, after a false start with first line support, "2nd level" agreed to replace the unit FOC.

However, data is lost. No way of retaining your earlier backups, therefore earlier data held and accessed via Time Machine app is lost.

Good news in that Apple have recognised a manufacturing fault and are replacing TC's. Bad news is, when returning under these terms, you will lose backed up data.

As discussed with Apple Support, the key fact to note is that YOU MUST NOT HOLD YOUR iTUNES or iPHOTO LIBRARIES ON TIME CAPSULE. If you do, you will lose your music and photo libraries. This is potentially disastrous so do not use TC as an "external drive" - just as a backup.
 
Time Capsule

..Hi guys, Is Apple going to sell those returned dead TC as refurbs? What do you think?
 
Apple told me they know what the problem is

My call guy was very chatty and told me that Apple know exactly what the problem is with these Time Capsules and it is not the power supply. But he also said that it is because they know exactly what the problem that they won't publicly acknowledge the problem - which is kind of strange!

It is going to take over a week to get a replacement out to me (in the Bay Area!) and he told me that taking it to the store would be useless because they couldn't replace it. I told him I thought this was not OK for a known problem and he suddenly denied that there was a known problem. When I quoted him back to himself he denied ever saying that they knew what the cause of the problem was.

He also tried to tell me that globally the number of failures is under 500, and he wasn't happy when I quoted the 1300 on the timecapsuledead.org website. And he was very proud of the fact that this was just 1% of the number sold - and unhappy when I pointed out that this maybe meant that there were many more failures still to happen and that they should be more ready to deal with them.
 
Roger Moore said:
Have seen many questions re: retention of data in event TC dies.

Mine just did. Don't have Applecare but, after a false start with first line support, "2nd level" agreed to replace the unit FOC.

However, data is lost. No way of retaining your earlier backups, therefore earlier data held and accessed via Time Machine app is lost.

Good news in that Apple have recognised a manufacturing fault and are replacing TC's. Bad news is, when returning under these terms, you will lose backed up data.

As discussed with Apple Support, the key fact to note is that YOU MUST NOT HOLD YOUR iTUNES or iPHOTO LIBRARIES ON TIME CAPSULE. If you do, you will lose your music and photo libraries. This is potentially disastrous so do not use TC as an "external drive" - just as a backup.
Click to expand...

Exactly why I'm transferring all my stuff back off it. I've had to buy another 1TB drive :mad: Basically I have a £300 wireless router (which I already have anyway).
 
djginsf said:
I told him I thought this was not OK for a known problem and he suddenly denied that there was a known problem. When I quoted him back to himself he denied ever saying that they knew what the cause of the problem was.
Click to expand...

This seems to be standard Apple policy, they only seem to acknowledge problems if they hit the mainstream press.

At least they are replacing the broken Time Capsules, even if they aren't being totally honest about it.
 
Roger Moore said:
Have seen many questions re: retention of data in event TC dies.

Mine just did. Don't have Applecare but, after a false start with first line support, "2nd level" agreed to replace the unit FOC.

However, data is lost. No way of retaining your earlier backups, therefore earlier data held and accessed via Time Machine app is lost.

Good news in that Apple have recognised a manufacturing fault and are replacing TC's. Bad news is, when returning under these terms, you will lose backed up data.

As discussed with Apple Support, the key fact to note is that YOU MUST NOT HOLD YOUR iTUNES or iPHOTO LIBRARIES ON TIME CAPSULE. If you do, you will lose your music and photo libraries. This is potentially disastrous so do not use TC as an "external drive" - just as a backup.
Click to expand...

Exactly why I earlier stated that this product is not a wise purchase. It's also handicapped because Apple doesn't service it locally.
 
Has there been any confirmation yet of whether the new models address whatever this not-power-supply-mystery problem is? I've been on the fence for a long time now, waiting for this answer.
 
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