Could overheating have been the cause? I’m sure that in other parts of the world the Time Capsule has to operate in much higher average temperatures than here, but we have had unusually hot weather until this last weekend.
Overheating can cause problems. For many years the common consensus was heat is the most likely cause of failure for hard disk drives. That has been thrown into question by Google Lab's testing, but there are other things in a Time Capsule than HDDs that could be subject to failure from overheating. Good air circulation is a great idea in my mind.
MacManiac:
The Time capsule is showing 136GB of 1.9TB available.
joemikeb:
The Capsule is 4th generation 802.11n and the latest Firmware version for this model, according to Airport Utility, is 7.8.1 which is installed.
I haven’t, I confess, tried to “see†it with the older iMac as once the workaround worked I became distracted.
When it was down, I could not see the TC via Airport Utility on the iPad.
Yes, I could still use it as a network.
Green light - thanks.
NG is on Channel 6 and TC is on Channel 100, with signal strengths of around 90% each. There are four other networks on 6 all of which are below 50%, and none on 100.
I don't see any apparent network conflicts or issues, but network issues can be transient.
However, with only 136GB (7.1%) free space on the Time Capsule drive it is perilously close to the recommended maximum. It won't be long until data starts dropping off the backend of the backup data set if it isn't happening already. That leaves you with two options
- allow data to continue to drop off the backend of your backup data sets.
- Erase your Time Capsule drive and start over from scratch.
Personally I have chosen the erase option on multiple occasions and never regretted it. While I have recovered files and even restored my entire system from Time Machine backups, I have never found it necessary to go back more than a month or so, most often only an hour or two or maybe overnight, and have not missed the older data sets. I erased a three year old backup set just last week because my 3TB RAID array went into overflow.
