Time Capsule 'Back up Failed'

Hi,
I have had my time capsule for 8 months now with no issues, until recently when I have noticed an exclamation mark in the centre of time machine icon at the top of my desktop.
when attempting to 'back up now' it highlights a message saying 'back up failed,' I have trolled through several posts with similar issues but to no success on how to fix this. It has happend twice now and the only way I have found to correct it is by powering down the TC and leaving it for a while before turning it back on. This has worked on both occasions however I am looking for some advice on a more permanant cure or any suggestions to help? as it is getting annoying.
Thank you

If it is a bug in the system would it not effect all TC's? Is this something a replacement will cure?
No, it is not uniform or easy even to reproduce the problem.. the people who have it never get rid of it.. no matter what measures they take.. but it is odd.. it can work fine for many months.. just as you have discovered.. but having triggered it.. you can never dispose of it.. like fleas on a dog.. !!
I do a lot of messing around and repairing of Time Capsules with power supply issues.. but I do not have that issue. This is what makes it hard to track down.. plus Apple has removed all the diagnostics from TC and the airport utility. It is just too simple for words. It is designed to work at the most basic level and if that fails.. too bad!!

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My Time Capsule has just failed, 2 months after the end of 12m warranty. same old known power supply issue, "just unlucky" says my local Apple service center. ***?

i bought a 2TB Time Capsule in Sep 2010. its just failed last week, less than 2 months after the expiry of the 12month warranty.
and 3 months after the end of Apple's offer to replace all the many Time Capsules that have failed previously due to this same fault.
nice timing guys.
"yeah, its dead. same old known power supply issue", says my local Apple service center, "just unlucky".
huh? "unlucky"? you sell products with known defects, and when it fails i'm "unlucky". nice.
"OK, anyway, how much to fix it ?", i ask.
"you can't fix them, its closed", is the reply, "you have to buy another one".
"hmpf. OK, how do I get my backed-up data off it ?"
"you can't. we could try break it open and recover the hard disk i guess, but no guarantees we'd get it, and you'd have to pay for us to do that, whether it works or not of course".
"er.... is there a hidden camera in here? are we on TV? you can't be serious ? ..and this piece of garbage is what i've been using for a secure backup of my precious, irreplaceable, priceless personal data ???"

ceeb28744. Welcome to the Apple Users Support Community. Sorry to hear your TC died! You said it was a 2TB so I would guess it be the model A1355/MB997LL/A or MC344LL/A. Believe it or not all users of these time capsules will eventually experience this problem like you have. There is a 99.5% (or better) chance that the only thing that is wrong with it is the internal power supply. If you will go to this site.... https://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modem s/apple-time-capsule-repair and once there look over at the left side and you will find:
Apple Time Capsule Repairers and from that list you will be able to choose from a list of individuals that could repair your TC and have it returned to you fully operational again. The individuals on the list are hardware technicians and they can save you a lot of money and time.
Larry

Can time capsule back everything including pictures?

Will Time Capsul back up my pictures also?

Why would it not?
It would be a useless backup if it failed to backup something as important as your pictures..
But it is Time Machine that is the backup program. Time Capsule is a dumb box getting the backup files.
iPhoto stores its library in strange and various ways according to version. So read up now how to restore.
http://pondini.org/TM/15.html
Also if this is an external drive you are talking about you need to make sure it is included in the TM backup.
TM cannot backup network drives.. so having no idea where you are storing this I can only point you to actually read about how Time Machine works.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

Will time capsule back up an external hard drive

Will time capsule back up an external hard drive?

Time Machine will backup the drive to the Time Capsule if it is formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and it is connected directly to your Mac by USB or FireWire....and it is not "excluded" from backups in Time Machine Options.

Can time capsule back up an external hard drive attached to my imac and the iMac internal Harddrive

Can time capsule back up an external hard drive attached to my imac and the iMac internal Harddrive

In addition to Kappy's comments, the external drive must be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) in order for Time Machine to be able to back it up.

Time Capsule - Backing up external hard drive connected to MacBoookPro

I've just bought a time capsule, but have not yet opened it, because I wanted to make sure what I want to do is possible (so I don't have to exchange it). So here's what I want to do:
In the past I have tried to connect an external hard drive to my airport extreme, and then download videos, pictures, music directly to the hard drive. The problem was that the wireless ability of the airport extreme and MacBookPro just wasn't up to it - took forever to work on videos, download pictures, music jumps fairly regularly etc. So I've kept everything on my MacBookPro which has now filled the hard disk completely. My plan is therefore to have all the video/music/pictures on an external hard drive connected directly (with FireWire) to my MacBookPro and then have the time capsule back up the MacBookPro as well as the hard disk connected to it on a regular basis. Will my Time Capsule be able to back up both the MacBookPro and its connected hard drive without having to rebuild my entire MacBookPro?

Unfortunately, Time Machine will not back up a non-HFS+ formatted drive. If it's important to have TM back them up, you need to format it to HFS+. You will then need to pick up a third party app such as MacDrive for the PCs to read the HFS+ drive. If this is the route you want to go, you will have to move the data off, re-partition to GUID and format the partitions to HFS+. Or go with a different backup program to back up these partitions.

Time Capsule backing up all my media again after Mavericks upgrade

Hello.
Since I've upgraded to Mavericks my Time Capsule is trying to Backup all my media since location of iTunes Library (media) changed in iTunes 11.
The problem is I have a huge music library (over 300GB), therefore I don't and won't let my Time Capsule back it up again. It would take days.
By now I've just "excluded" the "music" and "podcast" folders from my Backup thread, but this is a temporary solution. I don't want to lose all my music in case something goes wrong with my HD.
The question is: Is there any work around to this situation or the only solution is to Backup everything again?
Appreciate any help.
Thanks.

My oh my, slightly exceeds your lifespan.. three score and 10 or if you are strong four score..81,000 years hmmm..
Are you using Lion.. 10.7.5 to be exact .. you are subject to a serious bug, created by Apple and not fixed before release to all computers.. great the level of testing Apple does now.. think of yourself as a beta tester..
Here is the patch to update to the patch.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1599
If you are on a different OS tell us.. ML can have similar if not quite so bad issues.
The bug may have corrupted the old backup which is why it needs to be replaced. Unfortunately once it restarts the backup I doubt you can recover what was there.. it seems your backups now need backups if there happened to be anything you actually want.
I strongly recommend at the moment getting another software backup program.. superduper, CCC, chronosync.. something designed to create a single image.. and not self corrupt.

Will the new time capsule back up Windows on an iMac running Parallels Desktop?

Will the new time capsule back up Windows on an iMac running Parallels Desktop?

Windows home version MSBackup, cannot backup to network drives.
That was a little bonus from Bill for those who didn't fork out for Pro or Ultimate.
Like people with home versions would never need to backup to network drives.. oh no.. never!!
You need to mount the hard disk in windows for it to work.
It will help a lot if you load the airport utility for windows into your windows OS.
http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1547
Open windows explorer and type the network address of the TC.
\\TCname.local (where TCname is the correct network name of the TC).
The TC should have all names that are windows compatible.. ie
Fred Blog's Airport Time Capsule is just wrong. It is too long, it has spaces and it has apostrophe which is illegal.
A good name for the TC is TC
The default hard disk share name of data is fine. It should not be Time Capsule or anything again that is over long .. has spaces or is otherwise incompatible with windows.
A good name for the TC wifi is TCwifi
Then you can mount it \\TC
typing that directly into the address bar of windows explorer.
There are still issues with windows naturally and running in parallels I have no idea what other issues might come up.
Tell me if you have issues.. but you will need most likely to check the network.
Open a command window and ping the TC by name and by IP address. If IP address works just mount by IP.
\\10.0.1.1 for example .. and that is the default TC IP address when in router mode.
If you still cannot access the TC my recommendation is to use a USB drive and use that.. it is 10x easier and more reliable than mixing Mac and windows backups on the TC.

My time capsule backs up every hour. how do I change this to daily backup, my time capsule backs up every hour. how do I change this to daily backup

My Time Capsule backs up every hour.. How do I change this to back up daily?

http://pondini.org/TM/13.html

I am getting a message that my time capsule back up isnt backing up because my macbook is in use????

I am getting a message that my time capsule back up isnt backing up because my macbook is in use????

Stock standard Mountain Lion issues..
Reboot the TC.. or disconnect all users if you use v5 utility.
See C12 http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Does time capsule back-up files which I am currently working on in a program?

Hey everybody,
If I am working on a file in a program, does time capsule back this file up? So if the program(third party) crashes after half an hour for example, can I still get the file back or would it be incomplete because it was open during back-up?
Thanks in advance.
Jelle

Most apps don't work with the actual file on disk; they copy it into memory and make the changes there.
Like most backup apps, Time Machine doesn't (can't) back up anything in memory, only things on disk.
When you Save a file you're working on, or done with, it goes to disk and will be included on the next backup.
Similarly, if the app has an "autosave" facitity, that will copy the "working" version to disk. Many apps do that to a separate file (often named the same as the original, but with something like "autosaved" appended). Lion apps that support Lion's AutoSave facility save it to the original file.

Brand new Mac, had to erase drive through disk utility as time machine back up failed. Now disk utility only has the option to install Mountain Lion which my Mac won't allow. Anyone any ideas as my Mac won't load anything up but disc utility!

Brand new Mac, had to erase drive through disk utility as time machine back up failed on initial setup, USB cable popped out Now can only access disk utility as won't load to log in screen. The only has the option in disc utility is to re-install Mountain Lion which my Mac won't allow or loading another time machine back up but after an hour of it processing, that didn't resolve the issue either! The time machine back up is the latest back up of my Mac Book Pro which was using OS X Maverix. I'm guessing I'm going to have to take my Mac to the store but that would be a hassle so does anyone have any ideas?

Follow this guide using another Mac.
Insert your newly created Mavericks USB into you Mac, press the power button and then hold down 'option,' until it gives you an option to boot from the USB. You will then be able to erase the internal disk with Disk Utility and reinstall Mavericks straight after.
After that you should be able to use Migration Assistant to restore your applications and user data.

My time machine back up failed because it says the backup volume could not be mounted

My time machine back up failed because it says the backup volume could not be mounted. What does that mean and how do I fix it so that it backs up?

A whole lot about Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.
Use Disk Utility to repair the TM drive. If that doesn't help, and you don't find help from the above, then erase the drive and start a new TM backup.

How do i keep my mac from sleeping during time capsule back-up?

How do I keep my mac from sleeping during time capsule back-up please?

In System Preferences>Energy Saver, set sleep time to "Never".
Clinton

How can i ensure that the time capsule back up all my data?

how can i ensure that the time capsule back up all my data and no any data missed during the back up? becz i was backing up my mac to time capsule for the first time and it takes only 5 hourse for 279GB which is doesnt make sense
any idea, how to ensure that all my data been backed up

well this tells you why you are having issues.. since you have a filevault and unless you are logged on as that user TM has no way to backup the vault.
so that is why the backup is so small.
And you cannot remove the file vault because the disk is too small.. you are in catch 22..
You cannot backup and you cannot remove the vault..
Login as the user who has the file vault and copy the files off the computer to a directory on the TC.. Then just delete the files on the computer.. that will then allow you to remove the file vault.
But never will I ever use file vaults so I am being theoretical .. please read it up yourself.
http://pondini.org/TM/25.html
You are not doing the background reading you need to understand what you are doing..
read the whole of pondini's info.. or at least skim it so you know what is there.
Avoid like the plague file vaults..
When disks go belly up, as they always do.. your files will be lost. Somewhere they need to be stored in the clear.. so why bother .. put better security on the computer and forget vaults.

Time Capsule 'Back up Failed'

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