Ever had a time capsule fail?

[ame8199]

Still thinking about a time capsule, but I was wondering have you ever had one fail?

If it fails, do you lose everything? Do you back up your back up?

Are they pretty reliable?

I had my backup on a external drive and it became corrupt. So I'm a little wary.

As I'm getting it all back together, I need something

 

[ColdCase]

Over several years I have had one hard drive and one power supply fail. Fixed the supply and was like new. Hard drive lost all data. I have two Time machine destinations setup on my network, One on a Time capsule, one on a shared mac drive. The computer's time machines are configured to backup to both, so they alternate. Lose one backup destination drive, you still have the other one.

Some here use crashplan or equivalent as the second backup.

Backup of a backup is not a good idea.

 

[maxsix]

I'm on my fourth one. All are working extremely well after several years. My ecosystem just gets larger and larger.

Buy with confidence.

 

[ame8199]

Guess I didn't mean back up my back up...meant back up in more than one place.

Are cloud services recommended as a back up System?

Thank you both for your response

 

[priitv8]

Are cloud services recommended as a back up System?

As a safety net for the worst case - indeed. As with everything in da cloud - it's easy to get your stuff there, perhaps not so easy to get it back.
PS As was correctly pointed out in one data security lecture : there actually is no such thing as "cloud". You are just moving your data to somebody else's computer. So, it becomes a matter of trust.

 

[ame8199]

Hmm so trust a machine not to fail or trust someone else with the cloud.... Decisions decisions..

 

[ame8199]

I already have trust issues

 

[sjinsjca]

I've had backup disks of many varieties fail, including two Time Capsules over many years of dependable usage. It's why, for my family's automatic backup, we use an Airport Express with several USB drives connected to it-- that way if the Airport fails, our backups won't necessarily die with it. Each of our Macs backs up alternately to at least two of the drives. And, we have a family Crashplan.com subscription, so each machine is remotely backed-up too (in encrypted form).

Drive failure is a matter of when, not if, whether it's inside a Time Capsule or anywhere else. So, back up duplicatively.

Also keep in mind that if your Mac has AppleCare, your Airport or Time Capsule is covered by it too.

As to trust issues, the most untrustworthy part of your digital experience is your data storage. You are far more likely to lose data to hardware or software error or damage, or physical theft, than to the depredations of hackers or the NSA. So back up, and back up in multiple places.

 

[ame8199]

I guess if they really want pictures of my dogs and their various sporting events...so be it. Only really concerned about pictures and music.

 

[omikeyz]

Still thinking about a time capsule, but I was wondering have you ever had one fail?

If it fails, do you lose everything? Do you back up your back up?

Are they pretty reliable?

I had my backup on a external drive and it became corrupt. So I'm a little wary.

As I'm getting it all back together, I need something

Mine failed and I gave the Time Capsule back to Apple. I now have a fixed wire drive connected to my iMac and that works 100% of the time with regular backups. Hoping I can get my money back, will see next month.