New Time Capsule seems very very slow

Hi all, I am using a Time Capsule 3TB with a 2011 MacBook Air 13", 1,8 GHz i7, 250 GB.

When I first set the Time Capsule up I direct connected my Macbook to it using CAT 5 ethernet and an Apple Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter.
I have tried the same with a CAT 6 cable, and also using a different port on the Time Capsule, and there are no improvements,

The first Time machine backup took more than 24 hours!! - more like 36 in fact, did not time it exactly.

This created a backup Sparsebundle file of around 150 GB.

This seemed very excessive to me so I tried transferring some movie files direct from the Air to the Time Capsule - using the same Thunderbolt to Ethernet connection.

5.38 GB took close to one hour! The activity monitor gave the following:

Data received - 51.9 KB/sec
Data Sent - 1.93 MB/sec

This is actually slower than my broadband connection :-(

The same files transferred to a Drobo FS via the same network took only 3 min and 41 secs.

Now the Drobo is not known for it's speed, but the difference here is huge.

I had been hoping to store iTunes files and movies on the TimeCapsule and use them with Apple TV, but it seems to be too slow for that.

Any suggestions? I must be doing something wrong?

Apple's own website refers to the Time Capsule like this:

"So whether you have 250 songs or 250,000 songs to back up, room is the last thing you’ll run out of. And considering all that storage and protection come packaged in a high-speed Wi-Fi base station starting from £249, data isn’t the only thing you’re saving."

From this I assumed that I could store iTunes etc on here, but at the moment it seems too slow. I cannot believe that it is supposed to be as slow as it is - 1.93 MB/sec cannot be right, right?

I had considered attaching a large USB drive to the Time Capsule for regular file storage, but I cannot see how this would make things any faster, or am I wrong?

MCASan thanks for your prompt reply. But I can't afford to have my Mac sitting around waiting for a backup to finish (just because I have some new files) and taking ages about it, when I should be leaving for work.

If it's really supposed to be this slow, then it's of no use to me, and 3TB is a waste for a single MacBook air.

Any other ideas? I might just have to return it.

Well, I took the Time Capsule and my MacBook into Apple today.

They did some tests, and the Genius said that it was faulty. He said there was no way that it should be that slow for data transfer.

In fact in the store he could not get the Time Capsule to connect at all, even to one of their own Macs.

So there was some kind of fault, and they replaced it with a brand new one, without me even having to ask.

Got it set up now, and the first Time Machine backup is estimated to take around 4 hours, which is a HUGE improvement.

So glad I got this sorted. Great service from Apple

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Weaselboy said:

I have an idea. Do you have wifi on on the Macbook Air? It sounds like even though you have it connected to ethernet, it is using the wifi connection. Check the screen below under Network in System Preferences and make sure you have the ethernet connection at the top and the wifi at the bottom. If it is not, even though they are both connected, the machine will use the wifi... and you don't want that. Click the gear at the bottom to change the order.

Click to expand...

Thanks Weaselboy, I only just noticed your reply.

I had the wi-fi turned off the whole time on the Air, so there was no way it was on wi-fi. However I did not realise that you could specify which connection to use in order of preference. So I will make sure that it is configured to use Ethernet before Wi-Fi if connected.

Tried a quick transfer of 2GB to check the connection, and this took less than 1 minute. This is the sort of speed I would expect, so the first Time Capsule was faulty for sure. Glad I went into Apple today, and got it all sorted