Time Capsule 3TB

[jsf721]

I have a 2 TB time machine. Works great. Its 70% full and backing up several iMacs and MacBook's in my household.

I know the Time Capsule is discontinued but my local store has them.

Is the new one faster WFI than the 3 year old 2TB?

Thanks

Jeff

 

[chrfr]

I have a 2 TB time machine. Works great. Its 70% full and backing up several iMacs and MacBook's in my household.

I know the Time Capsule is discontinued but my local store has them.

Is the new one faster WFI than the 3 year old 2TB?

Thanks

Jeff

If you have the one that's taller than it is wide, then no, the wifi is not any different.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

I used to be a Time Capsule user, but am so glad that I finally separated my Time Machine backups from the router. You can buy a much larger hard drive for a far better price once you split them up. Plus if one thing goes bad, you don’t have to replace both the router and hard drive. Good idea back then, not so much now.

 

[jsf721]

Thanks, I do have the flat one. Good to know I can get some speed gains.

If you have the one that's taller than it is wide, then no, the wifi is not any different.

[doublepost=1540847027][/doublepost]I have SSD envy and RAM Envy ! I just got a 27" iMac with a 3 TB fusion drive, 16 GB memory.

What is the router and back up drive you suggest. You obviously know hardware so I'd appreciate the suggestion.

This is my home environment and I am an amateur Photographer and Videographer. Mostly my kids and I need a good reliable back up system that is AUTOMATIC. It cannot rely on me doing anything daily.

Thanks

I used to be a Time Capsule user, but am so glad that I finally separated my Time Machine backups from the router. You can buy a much larger hard drive for a far better price once you split them up. Plus if one thing goes bad, you don’t have to replace both the router and hard drive. Good idea back then, not so much now.

 

[chrfr]

Thanks, I do have the flat one. Good to know I can get some speed gains.

You’ll only see those gains if you have a good strong signal and your devices support 802.11ac.

 

[mikehalloran]

You’ll only see those gains if you have a good strong signal and your devices support 802.11ac.

If your Macs support 802.11ac, a Time Capsule tower is a good thing but there are other 802.11ac wireless routers out there, too. Although I have a couple, I no longer recommend them. The Seagate HDD inside is hard to replace and needs to be replaced with another Seagate due to the form of the housing. There is no reason the router and the storage has to be in the same housing. The Airport Extreme is the router only—only the tower supports 802.11ac.

I now recommend divorcing the Time Capsule from the router. My favorites are the WD MyCloud. These are ethernet only and they use the WD Red low energy, extra heavy duty HDDs. Time Machine is one of the default protocols supported by these—takes a minute to log in and set up.
https://www.wdc.com/products/personal-cloud-storage/my-cloud.html

The My Cloud Mirror and Pro contain multiple drives in one housing.
https://www.wdc.com/products/personal-cloud-storage/my-cloud-mirror-gen2.html
https://www.wdc.com/products/network-attached-storage.html

 

[mreg376]

I have a 2 TB time machine. Works great. Its 70% full and backing up several iMacs and MacBook's in my household.

I know the Time Capsule is discontinued but my local store has them.

Is the new one faster WFI than the 3 year old 2TB?

Thanks

Jeff

Bear in mind that the "newest" Time Capsule was released in 2013. These were great plug-and-play, solid, reliable devices, but they're way behind the times and it doesn't pay to purchase one now.

 

[jsf721]

I did not realize it was 5 year old tech at this point.

I do love easy but I think I will separate the drive and router the next go around.

I like to replace stuff before it fails, or at least be ready so I am starting my research.

thanks

Bear in mind that the "newest" Time Capsule was released in 2013. These were great plug-and-play, solid, reliable devices, but they're way behind the times and it doesn't pay to purchase one now.

[doublepost=1540902337][/doublepost]I now agree with you about the separation. I have a brand new iMac so I think it would support the newest wireless correct?

Ill look into your recommendations, thanks for the links.

If your Macs support 802.11ac, a Time Capsule tower is a good thing but there are other 802.11ac wireless routers out there, too. Although I have a couple, I no longer recommend them. The Seagate HDD inside is hard to replace and needs to be replaced with another Seagate due to the form of the housing. There is no reason the router and the storage has to be in the same housing. The Airport Extreme is the router only—only the tower supports 802.11ac.

I now recommend divorcing the Time Capsule from the router. My favorites are the WD MyCloud. These are ethernet only and they use the WD Red low energy, extra heavy duty HDDs. Time Machine is one of the default protocols supported by these—takes a minute to log in and set up.
https://www.wdc.com/products/personal-cloud-storage/my-cloud.html

The My Cloud Mirror and Pro contain multiple drives in one housing.
https://www.wdc.com/products/personal-cloud-storage/my-cloud-mirror-gen2.html
https://www.wdc.com/products/network-attached-storage.html

 

[mikehalloran]

Bear in mind that the "newest" Time Capsule was released in 2013. These were great plug-and-play, solid, reliable devices, but they're way behind the times and it doesn't pay to purchase one now.

Yea, I bought a flat one the day the towers were released. My son-in-law was on the development team and they were surprised by the release, too. At the end of the week, they were all assigned to new teams.

I have a brand new iMac so I think it would support the newest wireless correct?

Yes and no. 802.11ac is no longer the fastest wireless but it is the latest standard supported by Apple—unless we hear differently in the next few hours, of course. The form factor of it and the Seagate drives it contains makes replacing/upgrading the HDD a major hassle—it can be done.

It works well in my 2,000 sq ft house and is faster than gig ethernet. I tested that for fun when I bought my daughter an MBP last year.

One thing that these and the current Airport have going for them is that Apple makes it easy to keep the firmware up to date. If you read and paid attention to those reports about routers being hacked earlier this year, you'll know that the Apple Time Capsules and Airports were not affected—any of them old or current.

BTW, I like the flat Time Capsules—just not for wireless. They are very easy to open up. Stick a 10T WD Red in them and they last nearly forever—or till the power supplies give out.
[doublepost=1540914324][/doublepost]https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0719498XY/ref=twister_B07GXT9HNH?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

It was a Seagate engineer who gave me the heads-up on these. They're built for NAS (network attached storage) and designed to run 24/7. This means low energy consumption, cool running and extra heavy bearings (relative to other HDDs, of course).

These are the drives that WD uses in the My Cloud series.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

I just got a 27" iMac with a 3 TB fusion drive, 16 GB memory.

What is the router and back up drive you suggest. You obviously know hardware so I'd appreciate the suggestion.

This is my home environment and I am an amateur Photographer and Videographer. Mostly my kids and I need a good reliable back up system that is AUTOMATIC. It cannot rely on me doing anything daily.

Thanks

Congrats on the new iMac! That's a great machine that will serve your needs well!

When it comes to separating your router and backup drive (coming from a Time Capsule) the first thing you need to ask yourself is whether or not you want the Time Machine Machine backup drive to be co-located with your iMac or co-located with your router (presumably in a different room).

If it is to be co-located with the router in a different room, the advantage is the backup hard drive is out of sight and out of mind, which means less wires and less things where your iMac is located. The disadvantages (which is not a disadvantage to most people) is that your Time Machine backups will be slower since they will be wireless vs direct-connected, but backup speed is of little importance to most people. The other possible disadvantage is setting up a remote drive attached to your router *might* pose a little work for those that are not technically inclined. But I'm sure you won't have much of a problem...and you have lots of smart people here that can help you.

If you co-locate the backup drive with your iMac, then setup is dead simple. Simply buy the external desktop hard drive of your choice, plug it in, and send your Time Machine backups there. As for what brand of hard drive to buy, well, its tough to say which one is best and that could be debated forever with no clear answer. I'm a fan of Western Digital, but that is just what works for me. What I can recommend is that you buy an external desktop hard drive (comes with its own power cord) and do not buy a portable hard drive (does not come with a power cord and is powered by USB). I also highly recommend that you buy a hard drive that is 4 times larger than the size of your current data. In other words, if you have 1.5TB of data, then buy at least a 6TB external hard drive to use for your Time Machine backups. Hard drives are cheap and a drive that is 4x larger than your current data will give you plenty of headroom to "reach back" and recover anything you need. To give you perspective on pricing, today you can buy a 6TB Western Digital External for $129 or an 8TB WD External for $159 at B&H Photo. You are likely to find deals about $20-$30 cheaper as the Black Friday deals start pouring in.

As for which router to buy, I will defer to those that are smarter than me on the latest and greatest. I have been using an Apple Airport Extreme for the last 3-4 years and am not up-to-speed on today's latest wifi router offerings. A lot depends on how much coverage and speed your house needs. I'm sure some smart people here can chime in and help you with that.

Hopefully this helps. If you're in the market for something new, I think you're doing the right thing by moving away from the Time Capsule concept and splitting your router and backup drive into two pieces.

 

[LiveM]

I would stick with Airport and get the Extreme plus a stand-alone hard drive to plug into the USB port.

 

[AlexMaximus]

I have a 2 TB time machine. Works great. Its 70% full and backing up several iMacs and MacBook's in my household.

I know the Time Capsule is discontinued but my local store has them.

Is the new one faster WFI than the 3 year old 2TB?

Thanks

Jeff

I had the same situation. My Time Capsule is the flat one. Since I have been very happy with the device, I decided to upgrade the internal HDD my self with an enterprise-grade 4TB server HDD with 5 years warranty. Very easy to do, just go on YouTube to see how the process works. Its a little time consuming to get the rubber off, but once you are through, it's very easy to swap.
I do not share the opinion for separating the router with the backup system like others do because of the following reasons:

1. External HDD brands usually put the cheapest and lowest performing HDDs in their enclosures to compete with other low-cost brands. This means a higher risk of HDD failure, low cache, old firmware, less warranty, and low performance. Out of my experience from the past, you will absolutely not find Drives such as a WD Black/Gold or HDDs with warranty greater then 3 years in a low-cost external HDD enclosure. This way your risk of data loss is very often greater, not smaller.

2. Because of this, always choose the HDD yourself. From a risk point of view, a time capsule upgrade with an HDD that was picked wisely is a better option.

3. Backups can be done also by a NAS, that should be kept in mind. With Apple, Synology works great and has good support.

4. As the OP mentioned, a more automatic backup can be created with brands like the Drobo product. I do not have one, you may consult other info on YouTube regarding Drobo