New Time Capsule

[matthew12]

Need a new Time Capsule. Upgraded my Mac's hard drive to 500GB (same as my Time Capsule), should I buy the 1TB, 2TB, or wait for an update?

 

[blevins321]

Much more feature-rich option for close to the same price as a 1TB Time Capsule:

2-bay Synology NAS (Here)

And put two Western Digital Green 2TB drives into it (Here)

Total price: 199.99 + 79.99 + 79.99 = 359.97. Amazon has a 1TB Time Capsule for $349.99. The Synology will allow for use of Time Machine (edited), and will have redundancy in case one of the drives dies. You put 4TB into it, and you'll have 2TB minus formatting loss (250-ish GB) actually available for use. And you can expand later with larger drives without replacing the NAS unit.

Edit: See my review of the 4-bay unit (same software) here.

 

[Guilfox]

Time Capsules Are Notoriously Bad

Hi There,

I have owned a 1TB Time Capsule for less than 2 years and it died on me. It is out of warranty and without purchasing Applecare for my MacBook Pro Apple won't replace it. I know it only has a 12 month warranty but in my opinion TCs are at worst not fit for purpose, or at least, too much of a gamble to get another one.

The Synology looks just the ticket.

 

[vincenz]

I've had my 1 TB Time Capsule for 18 months now. No problems so far. There was that whole fiasco with them dying, but if you get the 3rd or 4th generation ones, you shouldn't have a problem.

 

[TallManNY]

I tried to buy one at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in New York. It is one of their flagship stores. When store employee realized they were out of stock, she speculated that something new might be on its way. I don't know if this was baseless speculation (this was just a low level floor person) or if it warrants investigation and delay. I don't need one right away, so I'm going to wait a week and see if I find any rumors of a new one.
Also I've heard some bad things about them failing. In fact I'm replacing one that just failed. But I bought that one as an open box special a few years ago and it never worked all that well (last time I buy an open box special from Tekserve) so I'm not surprised that it failed.

 

[McRCN]

Reliability after 18 months seems to be an issue.

 

[bohbot16]

Reliability after 18 months seems to be an issue.

That was only an issue with the first generation Time Capsules.

 

[matthew12]

Possible Solution (But Probably Expensive)

Reliability after 18 months seems to be an issue.

Apple could use an SSD, but it'd be too expensive for them to make money (because no one would buy it). Based on the prices of SSD's for the base 13" pro, 500 GB would be $1250 and a terabyte (based off of simple math) would be $2500, and 2 TB would be anywhere from $3750-$5000.

 

[fkhan3]

Sounds like your TC is working fine and you just want to upgrade to get a bigger HD? If thats the case, why dont you just buy a cheap external 1TB HD and plug it into TC? You can upgrade when new ones come out.

 

[Brian33]

Sounds like your TC is working fine and you just want to upgrade to get a bigger HD? If thats the case, why dont you just buy a cheap external 1TB HD and plug it into TC? You can upgrade when new ones come out.

This is worth considering. Or, do what I did--opened it up and replaced the 500GB internal drive with a 2 TB drive. It was easy. I followed the instructions I found here: http://www.applefritter.com/node/23907

 

[unobtainium]

That was only an issue with the first generation Time Capsules.

If you go to the Apple site, under product reviews for the Time Capsule you'll find a LOT of negative reviews. Many of these are quite recent, so it's hard to buy a Time Capsule with confidence. Are you sure the issues have been resolved?

I was thinking of just buying an Airport Extreme and hooking it up to the 1 TB LaCie external HD I have lying around. OP might want to consider that as an option, since it's probably cheaper (especially if you already own an external HD).

 

[Sodner]

I have 2 iMac's and an Air and my 1TB Time Capsule isn't cutting it. Get BIG as you will grow into it.