Time Capsule Power Problem
This Saturday I woke up to a dead 1TB Time Capsule. No lights from the LEDs. I tried a different power cord, different outlets and the best I could do was to get it to power up for a few seconds and then it would shut down. I Googled around and found this link
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/11/are-apple-time-capsules-out-of-time/ and that led me to the Apple User Forum discussion board. There were several threads there, each about 10 pages long, with users in the same boat I am in.
Yes, my Capsule is around 18 months old, just like all the others that have broken.
The problem is the internal temperature causes the power supply to fail. Yesterday I went to the local Apple store to see a genius. He got the same results I did, told me how rare this problem is (yeah right), I pointed out to him the hundreds of posts in Apple's own forum describing this problem.
For such a "rare" problem, he quickly gave me a rote, apparently well rehearsed answer, which I summarize below:
"It is out of warranty. We can fix it for $499, and Apple will destroy/erase the drive. Or you can buy a new Capsule for $299 and keep the old Capsule, then you can remove the drive and put it in a disk enclosure and use it."
It really makes no sense. The out of warranty repair is $499 and it is really a swap and you don't even get your files back or have any certainty that critical information is safeguarded (banking, tax returns, etc.), or buy a new one for $200 less? Well, I certainly won't buy another one and suffer through this again 18 months later.
They tout the Capsule as using a "server grade" drive. The implication being that the mean time before failure should be something like one million hours, but if you followed those links I put above, you can expect it to last 18 months.
Apple has set up no data recovery service for users of failed capsules to retrieve their data (backups and other files you may have stored there). Furthermore they are not owning up to the fact that it is a flawed design and hundreds if not thousands of them are failing prematurely. They could have put the power supply externally and cut down on the temperature rise, or improve the cooling and air flow. It's a case of aesthetics before robustness.
Please don't think of this as a rant. Consider it a warning. If your Capsule is getting anywhere nears 14 to 18 months old, you better have a backup drive for backing up the contents of your Capsule periodically because ...
it will fail.
I have been a Mac user since the old SE and have championed the Mac inside my company, fighting the Windoze oriented IT department. I have even recommended the Time Capsule to others. I feel Apple has let us down on this product and they are doing nothing to correct it.
