Design Flaw Could Cause Apple’s AirPort Time Capsule To Fail

Back in the day, Apple used to sell the AirPort Time Capsule which basically helped Mac users backup their devices to a physical drive, an alternative for those who’d rather not keep things in the cloud or want a backup that they can physically own. This device was eventually discontinued back in 2018, but as it still works, we imagine that there are probably a lot of users who are still using it.

However, if you are the owner of an AirPort Time Capsule, you might want to pay attention to this new report. According to a report from German data company Dattenrettung, it seems that a design flaw of the AirPort Time Capsule could cause it to fail, which means that all your data stored on it could end up being lost.

Apparently this is due to Apple’s choice of using the Seagate Grenada hard drive, where according to the report, “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.”

They note that while data recovery is possible, it requires very high effort and even then, not all of it can be retrieved. So if you do own an AirPort Time Capsule with 2TB or 3TB of storage, you might need to look for another backup drive just in case. Alternatively, 9to5Mac points towards an iFixit guide which shows how to swap out the drive in your AirPort for another one.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Gadgets
Tags: airport, seagate