My three Time Capsules no longer show up anywhere in the Finder.

Question

     I have two older Time Capsules and one new Airport Time Capsule.  They show up nicely in the AirPort Utility, but do not show up anywhere in the Finder—neither on the desktop nor the sidebar.
     The Yosemite software is all up-to-date on my iMac5, and I have employed all the suggestions offered on this website—including adjustments to “Back to My Mac” and trying to adjust the router (both of which have made no difference).  I have successfully shifted my Time Machine backups over to three Drobos, but I would like to employ the Time Capsules for ™ backups, if at all possible.  I would appreciate anyone’s help—thank you.

Answer 1

Some things are going to be necessary .. and you are going to hate me  but I must insist..
You have used the pipe symbol in a name.. Some characters are illegal .. I think pipe could be one of them.. ie |
Your setup now seems to have even more issues.. so I am going to need to get you do some fixing up and network rearranging..
If I confused you with the comment to connect the TC directly to the computer I am sorry..
Here is what I would do for a full manual setup of the TC.
Airtport Utility can't find Airport Time Capsule on either of my 2009 Macs
The older Mac running Yosemite won't help..
Here are some other details of getting this to work.. ie this is my standard setup under yosemite bug heaven.
A factory reset of the TC is the start.. it is required so you can find it again.
Factory reset universal
Power off the TC.. ie pull the power cord or power off at the wall.. wait 10sec.. hold in the reset button.. be gentle.. power on again still holding in reset.. and keep holding it in for another 10sec. You may need some help as it is hard to both hold in reset and apply power. It will show success by rapidly blinking the front led. Release the reset.. and wait a couple of min for the TC to reset and come back with factory settings. If the front LED doesn’t blink rapidly you missed it and simply try again. The reset is fairly fragile in these.. press it so you feel it just click and no more.. I have seen people bend the lever or even break it. I use a toothpick as tool.
N.B. None of your files on the hard disk of the TC are deleted.. this simply clears out the router settings of the TC.
Setup the TC again.
ie Start from a factory reset. No files are lost on the hard disk doing this.
Then redo the setup from the computer with Yosemite.
1. Use very short names.. NOT APPLE RECOMMENDED names. No spaces and pure alphanumerics.
eg TCgen5 and TCwifi for basestation and wireless respectively.
Even better if the issue is more wireless use TC24ghz and TC5ghz with fixed channels as this also seems to help stop the nonsense. But this can be tried in the second round.
2. Use all passwords that also comply but can be a bit longer. ie 8-20 characters mixed case and numbers.. no non-alphanumerics.
3. Ensure the TC always takes the same IP address.. you will need to do this on the main router using dhcp reservation.. or a bit more complex setup using static IP in the TC. But this is important.. having IP drift all over the place when Yosemite cannot remember its own name for 5 min after a reboot makes for poor networking. If the TC is main router it will not be an issue.
4. Check your share name on the computer is not changing.. make sure it also complies with the above.. short no spaces and pure alphanumeric.. but this change will mess up your TM backup.. so be prepared to do a new full backup. Sorry.. keep this one for second round if you want to avoid a new backup.
5. Mount the TC disk in the computer manually.
In Finder, Go, Connect to server from the top menu,
Type in SMB://192.168.0.254 (or whatever the TC ip is which you have now made static. As a router by default it is 10.0.1.1 and I encourage people to stick with that unless you know what you are doing).
You can use name.. SMB://TCgen5.local where you replace TCgen5 with your TC name.. local is the default domain of the TC and doesn't change.
However names are not so easy as IP address.. nor as reliable. At least not in Yosemite they aren't. The domain can also be an issue if you are not plugged or wireless directly to the TC.
6. Make sure IPv6 is set to link-local only in the computer. For example wireless open the network preferences, wireless and advanced / TCP/IP.. and fix the IPv6. to link-local only.
There is a lot more jiggery pokery you can try but the above is a good start.. if you find it still unreliable.. don't be surprised.
You might need to do some more work on the laptop itself. eg Reset the PRAM.. has helped some people. Clean install of the OS is also helpful if you upgrade installed.
Tell us how you go.
Someone posted a solution.. See this thread.
Macbook can't find Time Capsule anymore
Start from the bottom and work up.. I have a list of good network practice changes but I have avoided Yosemites bug heaven.
This user has had success and a few others as well.
RáNdÓm GéÉzÁ
Yosemite has serious DNS bug in the networking application.. here is the lets say more arcane method of fixing it by doing a network transplant from mavericks.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/01/why-dns-in-os-x-10-10-is-broken-and-what-yo u-can-do-to-fix-it/
There is a few other things to be aware of.
When you have a whole chain of TC.. it can be a lot better to use static IP instead of bridge.
But the setup for this is pretty tricky.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/25135547?ac_cid=tw123456#
The one thing I think is important is to turn off all the TC.. and start from just one.. get that one working then add the next one.. either in bridge or static IP and work from there.. but the first one to setup off network if you need to as the setup looks rather complicated.. a laptop or something could be used..
Perhaps even test using the iOS version airport utility which can work better than utility in Yosemite.
I think I am failing to give you cookbook.. but some of the sections I hope are pretty close and you need to fix the parts to get the whole to work.