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Apple Time Capsule - A Warning!
If you’re considering buying, or already own, one of Apples Time Capsules please read this warning.
Around 18 months ago I was in the market for a wireless router. I owned a 13” MacBook, I use Macs at work and like many people, I’m impressed by the intuitive design and great looking products that Apple produce.
I visited my local Apple reseller (choices are limited here in the UAE and we seem to pay an inflated premium on all Apple products) and we discussed the options. He told me that the Airport Express had been replaced by a new product called a Time Capsule (TC). It sounded great, a fast wireless router AND 500GB of storage which I could connect to via Ethernet or wirelessly and would automatically back up my laptop with software installed on my MacBook - Time Machine - so long as I had the newest version of OS X.
I spent the money (I don’t remember exactly how much at the time) and took it home. Like all Apple products it was simple to set up and literally within minutes of plugging it in and turning my MacBook on, I was connected to the internet and transferring files back and forth to the HD.
This continued for around a year with no problems, the Time Capsule sat in the corner of the room, it’s little green light rarely turning orange to signify a problem. Over the year I had gradually transferred all of my work onto the machine, my entire iTunes collection, movies… everything that had been cluttering up the hard drive of my MacBook.
Then one day I came home and the green light had gone off.
I unplugged it and plugged it back in. I checked and changed the fuse in the plug (twice). I tried it in a different electrical socket. Nothing could revive my poor little Time Capsule and I started to worry about the ten years worth of portfolio work I had placed on it. The eight gigabytes of music, collected over the last eight years. Plus all the other little bits and pieces I wouldn’t be able to get back. It was well and truly dead.
At this point you may well imagine I considered throwing it very hard off of my balcony, and I did. But luckily common sense prevailed and I, using another internet connection in the house, searched the world wide web for a solution. I came across this site. It seemed I wasn’t alone. The ‘beautiful’ design of the TC had blinded me, and many others, to the fact that stuff like this needs to breath, it needs air or it overheats and dies.
And it seemed there was no solution. I wasn’t going to send my dead Time Capsule away to its grave without retrieving the data on it so I bit the bullet, took the advice found on this site... and performed a Time Capsule autopsy. After some swearing and the unscrewing of many little screws, the Time Capsule eventually donated its internal organs and the standard hard drive is now happily living inside my G5 tower. I managed to retrieve all the data which is now backed up in a number of different places.
A relatively happy ending, but a message to everyone taken in by the outward appearance of the Apple products - they don’t always get everything right and sometimes its what’s inside that counts.
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Update:
I feel compelled to say that Apple have recognised and fixed the problems with the version of Time Capsule I was sold. Current versions of Time Capsule are reported to be much more reliable. It’s also worth pointing out that one point of backup is rarely enough, especially if it’s kept in the same place as your original files. This week I’ve been looking into online ‘cloud’ backup services, but more about that in a future post.
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About the author
James Mattison is a British senior graphic designer based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) with a special interest in all things nicely put together.
© James Mattison 2010