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Time Capsule Advice

S

slapshot

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 22, 2009
40
0
Central Ohio
I am in the market for a new router and a back-up hard drive for a MacBook, a MacBook Air and an iMac in the house. I have been reading the reviews of Time Capsule on Apple's website and apparently it is not a very good product. 3 out of 5 stars with the biggest complaint being it fails after about 14 months of use. Needless to say, I do not want something that is not going to last.

With all that being said, can anyone recommend what I should get? Our Linksys router is about 4 years old and I have a feeling I am on borrowed time with it and I currently do not have an external back-up hard drive. I am looking for something that is fairly simple to set up, and is Apple & PS3 friendly.
 
Honestly I havent heard of much issues with the newest generation of Time Capsules and you can find great deals on them in the Apple Online Store under the refurb section (same warranty and specs as a new retail model).
The whole 18 month deal was with some of the first gen models PSU dropping after about 18 months or so and i believe its been properly resolved since.

I like my time capsule makes incremental back ups easy with a few Macs on the network. I think its worth it for sure.
 
I am happy with mine. It is 500 gig 1st gen running for 4 or five years now. I have a drobo FS hanging off the back which I now run time machine on. It works fine, Not blazingly fast, but wireless in not as fast as a hard link anyway.
 
As much as I love Apple, and their body of products, I think it's silly to spend $500 on TC, when you can spend $180 on AEBS + $100 on a 2TB drive, + $10 for a USB hub if you want to add a NAS. You can buy two more 2TB external, and still come out ahead.
 
I've had the original Time Capsule literally since day 1 and it is still running great.

That being said, I also would recommend a separate Airport Extreme base station and external hard drive. The ability to plug the drive into your computer if you ever needed to, let alone the cost savings, makes it a no brainer. Unless you simply must have no extra wires.
 
iVeBeenDrinkin' said:
As much as I love Apple, and their body of products, I think it's silly to spend $500 on TC, when you can spend $180 on AEBS + $100 on a 2TB drive, + $10 for a USB hub if you want to add a NAS. You can buy two more 2TB external, and still come out ahead.
Click to expand...

I do not know what a AEBS is, what a USB hub does, or what a NAS is.
 
slapshot said:
I do not know what a AEBS is, what a USB hub does, or what a NAS is.
Click to expand...

Airport Extreme Base Station; Network-attached Storage; they all connect to a hub. Essentially, with an AEBS and an external hard drive (a NAS), you have a "Time Capsule," at probably half the cost...

And carlgo has a good point, too... a TC eliminates the hassle of additional hardware, software, maintenance, etc.
 
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I love my Time Capsule. I had mine for just over a year and I could have gone with a router and external hard drive, but where I wanted it I had limited room. It was also so easy to set up.
I have a router and external hard drive for my mom's set up and it doesn't work as smooth as the Time Capsule. I had the hard drive hooked up the the router, it worked for a while and stopped. I can't get it to work now and the only way I can use the Time Machine is having the hard drive hooked directly into her iMac.


carlgo said:
That's why people buy TCs. The Better Choice for most people who do not want complication or nests of cables and devices that require attention.
Click to expand...

Great point also. I like not having 2 things on the top self, wires all over and stuff. At the time when I was looking for a Time Capsule I priced a Airport, a hard drive and all the hook ups and wires I needed it came out about $10 less then a Time Capsule.
 
Last edited:
slapshot said:
I am in the market for a new router and a back-up hard drive for a MacBook, a MacBook Air and an iMac in the house. I have been reading the reviews of Time Capsule on Apple's website and apparently it is not a very good product. 3 out of 5 stars with the biggest complaint being it fails after about 14 months of use. Needless to say, I do not want something that is not going to last.

With all that being said, can anyone recommend what I should get? Our Linksys router is about 4 years old and I have a feeling I am on borrowed time with it and I currently do not have an external back-up hard drive. I am looking for something that is fairly simple to set up, and is Apple & PS3 friendly.
Click to expand...

Since you say you're looking for something Apple & PS3 friendly, it sounds like you're not just planning on using the Time Capsule as a backup device, but to also use as a media server, or NAS solution.

I was recently considering this option too, but decided if I wanted to store my media (movies, music, etc.) on the TC only and not on my laptop I needed some kind of data redundancy for the TC. Also far as I know you can't stream directly from the TC, so you would have to mount the backup files on your laptop and then stream those from your laptop to the PS3. Doable but not an ideal solution; you'd need your laptop handy any time you want to stream something.

That basically led me to consider a true NAS solution, and I'm probably going to end up picking up the Synology DS211j, stick a few hard disks in there, and connect it to my network. It does Time Machine backups as well, and the RAID setup means if I decide to store movies for example only on the Synology I know that if one disk fails there is still a copy.

Long story short, if you're only looking for a backup solution the TC will fit the bill, but if you're looking for backup + media storage to stream I'd recommend something like the DS211j.
 
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