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Dead Time Capsule

natenate
edited May 2010 in General
My 500gb TC (bought in Feb '08) has bit the bucket & kicked the bullet. Light's gone out, and no matter how many times I unplug and plug it back in -- no luck. (There's no terrible blemish of a power button on these overheating beasts.)

Any thoughts?

I'm going to call Apple tomorrow as it seems they replace them for some folks, even out of warranty as this obviously is.

Comments

  • JohnJohn
    You might want to look at:

    http://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/985/Why+is+my+Time+Capsule+dead

    Like you mentioned, apparently these things fail quite a bit, and they might replace it, but rather than call, I would schedule an appointment with a "genius" at the local Apple store and take it in personally, because your chance of getting it replaced for free will be significantly better.

    If it's just the hard drive, you can always replace just that:

    http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Replacing-Apple-Time-Capsule-HDD/2750/1

    ...but it sounds like it's more than the hard drive.

    Anyway, good luck! I've got a friend who works at the Apple store, so I'll ask him if he has any insight on how the typical dead Time Capsule situation goes.
  • natenate
    It is a first gen device, so I have this intuitive sense that it will be one of the fan-failing, overheating devices that Apple is next-day replacing. We'll see!
  • JohnJohn
    Just curious, does the Time Capsule offer any substantial benefits over similar devices? I bought a 1TB external firewire drive for $90 that I have connected to my Airport Extreme, so for the money it's always seemed that the Time Capsule's price is a little excessive for what it does.
  • natenate
    Well, the ol' Apple "just works" magic applies. But I have other externals already, so if this doesn't get replaced I'll likely get a more generic $50 wireless-N router to replace it.
  • JohnJohn
    Just be careful using your Titanium with a new generic router, because more and more often I find that WPA2 is enabled as the standard encryption method, and that won't work with a standard Airport wireless-B card (you need to use WPA Personal).
  • natenate
    For my main router I have no encryption set up but instead just let in specific MAC addresses.
  • JohnJohn
    That's a great idea! I wish I could convince a lot of my customers to do it that way, but it's probably too difficult a solution for someone who isn't technical. Often I'll have customers who think their wireless card is not working, and they generally aren't technical enough to get into their router settings to do anything about it.
  • natenate
    Apple, bless their pea-picking hearts, sent me an overnight express replacement even though this thing was 2+ years old.
  • JohnJohn
    edited June 2010
    Very cool! They probably just do that so you don't get any ideas about starting a class-action lawsuit (leave it to me to be a cynic).
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