As much as you may love your old Apple Time Capsule, it may be time to back up its data and move on to a different drive.
Per German data recovery company Datenrettung Berlin, Apple’s Time Capsule, which was discontinued in 2018, could pose a risk to users, as a flaw in the Seagate drive inside could put data at risk.
The drives in question are now suffering from an apparent design flaw that is leading to abnormally high failure rates, according to Datenrettung:
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.
The damage to the parking ramp then causes the write/read unit to be destroyed and severely deformed the next time the read/write unit is parked. When the Time Capsule is now turned on again or wakes up from hibernation, the data disks of the Seagate hard drive are destroyed because the deformed read-write unit drags onto it.
The company said the failure in the Seagate drive design has been the cause behind nearly every Time Capsule failure it has seen. It says that while data recovery is sometimes possible, it requires “very high effort,” and in some cases, the data is not fully recoverable.
Datenrettung, in turn, has recommended that users with a Time Capsule with 2TB or 3TB of storage look for an alternative backup solution. The cool cats at iFixit have posted a detailed guide as to how you can swap the hard drive in an AirPort Time Capsule out and replace it with something more reliable.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.