JULY 21, 2010

Dead first generation 500GB Apple Time Capsule revived for free

I have an original (1G) Apple Time Capsule, a 500GB model bought in March of 2008. It has worked great as an AirPort base station and Leopard and now Snow Leopard Time Machine back-up hard drive for over 28 months. All of a sudden, AirPort Utility flashed a warning on my Mac Pro and the light on the Time Capsule turned orange. The light turned green again as I tried to discover what the warning meant. A few minutes later I again got the warning message and orange light followed by the Time Capsule's sudden death.

Fortunately, I recalled that just one week earlier Apple had posted a knowledge base article (#TS3351) on this problem. Apple extended the warranty to repair or replace certain 1G Time Capsules with a serial number range of XX807XXXXXX - XX814XXXXXX that exhibited the problem. My Time Capsule's serial number is XX809XXXXXX so I made a Genius Bar appointment and took it to my local Apple Store. To avoid a very long wait, be sure to make an appointment if you take yours to an Apple Store.

The staff person had me sign a statement that I might lose data. I told her that my only concern was for data security since it was my back-up drive and with the Time Capsule's sudden death I had no way to erase it. She assured me that security was not a problem and told me it would probably be repaired and would take 3-5 days--this was the 15th of July.

Yesterday, the Apple Store staff called to inform me that it was ready--5 days later but two of them were weekend days. According to the repair summary, Apple replaced the power supply. When I fired it up, all of my data were there including the profile with all my settings. [Bill Fox]


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Copyright © 1995-2010 by Bill Fox
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MY LAWYER MADE ME POST THIS: 8-/
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