Time Capsule

The Time Capsule indicator light is green if all is well.

If the indicator light is slowly blinking amber......about once a second.....then there is a setting that needs to be checked, or an update may be available for the Time Capsule

If the indictor light is solid amber, that may be a serious power supply issue or a failing/failed hard disk issue

What do you see?

About how old is the Time Capsule?

When you say that you have been having issues, what are they?

Is this the "tall" or "tower" shaped version of the Time Capsule?.......or......an older "flat" or "square" version that looks like a small white pizza box?

At this point, about all that you can do is try an extended power down of the Time Capsule.......4-6 hours or so. If the amber light stays solid when you power the Time Capsule back up, it is unfortunately worn out.

An older "flat" or "square" version of the Time Capsule is at least 7+ years old and as much as 10+ depending on the model and when it was placed into service. The average useful life of these versions was about 4-5 years, so you have done very well.

It's a 1TB

The 1TB model is at least 9 years and up to 11 years.. plus they used a Samsung drive which was not the greatest for 1TB version.. there was also a later 2TB which used the WD green drive..

It is not going to come back to life.. you can replace power supply and hard drive but the cost of doing it is not really worth it .. unless you are just doing it DIY for interest.

Yes, a NAS is the right device. Not sure how well the WD mycloud will work but if you are already using it for backups that is great.

Our recommended NAS is synology. They seem to have done a better job keeping up with Apple's continual changes of protocol and security with Time Machine.

The alternative is to use a backup software that is more reliable like Carbon Copy Cloner.

Or even a local USB drive will be far more reliable with Time Machine since Sierra really but particularly Catalina which made very substantial changes.

That looks like the answer for my question. I have a "pizza box" Time Capsule which hasn't backed up my OLD desktop Mac for at least four months. It appears to work as a wireless router though. It's been blinking amber for over a week now. It appears that I need to disconnect it entirely and buy a hard drive back up. It's just too old. For internet connection, I can depend on the modem provided by our internet connection (Google Fiber). Thank you, everyone.