Wesley Hilliard
Mac users who still rely upon Apple's Time Capsule may be in danger of device failure and data loss because of a newly discovered design flaw.
The Time Capsule was discontinued in 2018, but many Mac users still rely upon the device for timely backups. It is a router and HDD in a single enclosure that performs local backups of a Mac's data.
According to a German data recovery company, Datenrettung, the Time Capsule has a design flaw leading to failure and data loss in the aging machines. Golem reports that the German company has seen several Time Capsule failures, all with the same flaw.
The translated text from Datenrettung reads:
"We must assume that this is an error in the design1 of the Seagate Grenada hard drive installed in the Time Capsule (ST3000DM001 / ST2000DM001 2014-2018). The parking ramp of this hard drive consists of two different materials. Sooner or later, the parking ramp will break on this hard drive model, installed in a rather poorly ventilated Time Capsule."
"The damage to the parking ramp then causes the write/read unit to be destroyed and severely deformed the next time the read/write unit is parked. When the Time Capsule is now turned on again or wakes up from hibernation, the data disks of the Seagate hard drive are destroyed because the deformed read-write unit drags onto it."
The "parking ramp" is the part of the HDD that connects the drive to the external enclosure. Unfortunately, as the poorly-ventilated Time Capsule heats up, the two materials heat at different rates, leading to eventual wear and destruction of the parking ramp.
The data recovery company suggests that users that rely upon the Apple Time Capsule should seek a new backup solution. This is because the failure can occur at any time and data recovery isn't always possible.
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82 Comments
Had an Airport Extreme (no internal drive). Cheap fan shot craps and overheated. Ordered a new fan, went to iFixit to learn how to replace it, took it apart, and there it sat until I took it an electronics recycling center. These days I have a Linksys WiFi 6 802.11AX Mesh router setup that works well with my new Apple TV 4K 2021 that also has supports WiFi 6. Time marches on. The AirPort products are a distant memory to me now.
seems like the only good solution now is to attach a NAS to your network or get a router that supports time machine protocol. funny thing is those are actually more dough than the time capsule was. :/
I wonder if Apple will ever learn not to push their thermal limits quite so hard. Heat-related issues have been a recurring theme in my Mac experiences for at least a decade.
All of my Airport Extremes had the same failure mode, where they would fail to allow logins or resets; but would be 100% reliable and solid until the day of that failure. I’m happy with my mesh network setup with Homekit integration.
I am not familiar with the internals of Time Capsule, but would a preemptive replacement of the Seagate HD prevent or delay the problem???