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This is a nice product, too bad its not the newer version which allows you to use both bands and create two networks, but it works quite well.
CUSTOMERS WANT TO TRUST A COMPANY IN DELIVERING PRODUCTS THAT WORK. I URGE APPLE AS A LONG TERM CUSTOMER. WHAT A WASTE OF $500 BUCKS. I DIDN'T THINK IT WOULD HAPPEN TO MY TIME CAPSULE. CREATE A BETTER SOLUTION "BACK-UP" RAID 1/5 SOLUTION THAT WILL INSURE OUR DATA IS SAFELY AND SECURELY BACKED UP. PLEASE FIX, REPLACE, AND RECALL THE TIME CAPSULE HARDWARE.
I KNEW THE CONCEPT WAS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. MY 1ST GEN TIME CAPSULE JUST DIED OVER THE WEEKEND. EVEN AFTER READING ALL THE REPORTS OF DEAD TIME CAPSULES AFTER 18 MONTHS OF LIFE. THIS PRODUCT IS A FAILURE FROM THE START.
The time capsule is very compact and stylish and looks great on any desktop.Great product, reliable, solid, and secure with multi important functions. The Apple time capsule is awesome in both respects. Apple gives us another innovative product. If you are sick of cheap back up hard drives that fail in 6 months and slow wireless routers then look no farther. It's provides reliable, easy to use massive 1TB hard drive back up storage for your media and important data, and works seamlessly with Time Machine, plus fast Wireless file transfers and wireless internet so no more usb slots used up and cable running amok.
The signal is quite strong and reaches all areas of my 5 Bedroom home without a loss of signal (the most sensitive device for signal loss is my Nintendo DSi on WIFI - I barely get signal in far reaches of the opposite side of my house). USEThe device is simple to operate. Additionally, I use WIFI at home on my iPhone and the Nintendo DSi. I also put all of my songs from iTunes into the hard drive. There are 3 ports for USB devices and a reset button. I was up and running in about 10 minutes with 3 wireless devices - My laptop, my daughter's laptop and my wife's laptop. Then attach the network cable to the Time Capsule and plug the Time Capsule in.
With the ability to create a shared drive, I see limitless options for the operation of the wireless devices in our home. Prior to the installation of this product, I had to deal with 2 to 4 bars (out of 5) which varied depending upon how I tilted the iPhone. The same situation was with my Nintendo DSi. Instead of storing my songs on my laptop, it is synched with the wireless hard drive which allows more space, if I want to do video editing.CONSTRUCTIONThe drive is a square white box with a multicolor LED indicator light. Just plug in the network cable and plug your device into your surge protector. I did not measure transfer speed but the convenience of a wireless backup is a great concept. The top of the unit gets quite hot so I do not recommend placing anything on top of it.
Setting up the Time Machine's preferences is as simple as accessing the System Preferences folder and choosing Time Machine.
Running the installation disk from the Macbook Pro, setup was quite easy.
Installation of the Time Capsule software and configuration was intuitive.
If you used another drive in the past, make sure you change the drive on the Preferences or you will get error (-47), initially.Replacing a prior Belkin, the set up was a fraction of the time.
It serves as both my wireless router, as well as my backup hard drive.
The drive is quite quiet and you barely notice that it is on.OVERALLI am very happy with the Apple Time Capsule.
WHAT COMES IN THE BOXTime CapsulePlugInstallation DiskSETUPIf you are using a cable modem, unplug it and wait for the IP address to reset.
Backing up of my Macbook Pro's hard drive takes time (I left mine on overnight) for 279 GB of data.
Now, I get full strength on the WIFI Signal.I was able to back up my data by just dragging the folder into the hard drive interface.
To get around this, you have to explicitly exclude backing up such files. Typical Apple ease of use, with all configuration done by a very intuitive GUI application.Unfortunately, it's not a great network drive. As such, you should image your entire drive regularly, in addition to using Time Machine. Not only does this take a lot of time, it quickly depletes your backup drive because the same data is added to the disk every regular backup. You will find that even with a computer connected via Gb/s ethernet, transfer speeds will be limited to around 5-6 MB/s, tops. Good candidates for exclusion are Mail and iDisk caches, as well as virtual machine disk images.There have also been numerous reports of Time Machine backups being susceptible to corruption. However, they should only be considered part of a larger backup scheme.
The next backup will take a long time as the computer must scan the full disk again, but the backups then continue on normally after that.Time Machine backups have their place, and come in very handy to recover accidentally deleted files. They probably shouldn't be trusted for a full recovery, and won't be of any help if your computer's drive completely fails, anyway. First, it is a file-based differential backup. Overall, it's a very good product, but there are some serious limitation one should be aware of.As a router, it is fantastic. The drive appears to be internally connected using a very slow USB connection. That means if even a single bit of a 1 GB file is changed, the ENTIRE file gets backed up.
I've experienced this once, myself, after a backup was cancelled, so I can vouch that it happens. (How are you going to run Time Machine if you can't boot your computer). This product is basically three products: an airport extreme wireless router, a networked drive, and finally, with Leopard, a networked backup system. If you connect two Macs via fast ethernet, you can often get over 40 MB/s transfer speeds, so this is a rather large disappointment, especially for a device which will be getting a lot of use if you use Time Machine.Time Machine is great in theory, but has a few issues. However, the problems can often be fixed by deleting the last backup.
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