I’ve had an Apple Time Capsule in my house for over 18 months, and I love the little thing. It’s reasonably fast, let’s me backup my data every hour to it’s internal hard drive, and isn’t terribly loud. Unfortunately, my first Time Capsule just…died…on December 24, 2009. There wasn’t a flash, or a bang, or a screech. Like a loved pet (or relative…) we just went to bed and, in the morning, it was dead. We’ve memorialized it appropriately.
I’ve had some issues with the Capsule before. When I purchased it, there were some formatting issues that needed to be worked out and problems in finding the Time Capsule using the Airport Utility. Hoping that the Capsule wasn’t dead, I tested each ethernet port, swapped out the power cable, and so forth. Nothing worked, so I scheduled a Dec. 26th call with Apple support.
Something that (seemingly) few people are aware of: if you have a Macbook, Macbook Pro, iMac, or Mac Pro that is under warranty then your Apple routers are also under warranty.