Time Capsule Users ONLY

[WHM]

Received mine today via Fedex. Ordered on February 2 after returning a new Airport Extreme since I wanted to update to the 802.11n. and the announcement was made about The Time Capsule. I would like to know how the ones who ACTUALLY bought one thinks about it. Not interested discussing how we were ripped off by not having server grade hard drives or it's not worth the money. As I see it I have 14 days to determine that for myself so keep the comment to yourself if you have not ACTUALLY installed one in YOUR home. As stated I was already buying the newer Airport anyway and this was an easier way to keep my computers backed up. I will be backing up 4 Macs so I did get the 1 T TB so space would not be a problem for awhile. How did the installation and first backup go? Are you happy or not with the unit? Thank you in advance for your comments and if you do not have one... PLEASE DO NOT POST!😱

 

[chinarider]

So how was your installation WHM? Your first backup?

Im just courious because I am thinking of buying one but don't ACTUALLY have one installed in my home.

 

[xraydoc]

My initial Time Capsule experience here...

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=5077336#post5077336

So far, works exactly as advertised. I have no desire to make multiple partitions and such as many people posting on the other threads want to do. I bought it chiefly for Time Machine and that's what I'm going to let it do. I'm paranoid about losing data, so I keep careful and frequent backups.

First Time Machine run takes a while (Apple warns you of this, since you're limited by either ethernet or wireless speed), but backups afterward are zippy. I do advise connecting directly via gigabit ethernet for the first sync if you can, otherwise it'll take a very long time to do the first backup via wireless (basically, copying your entire HD minus the operating system itself, so we might be talking hundreds of gigabytes depending on what's on your Macs).

 

[WHM]

So how was your installation WHM? Your first backup?

Im just courious because I am thinking of buying one but don't ACTUALLY have one installed in my home.

I had a hard time getting Time Capsule to set up.... Finally connected my laptop to Time Capsule via an ethernet cable and that solved the problem. After finally getting the Time Capsule and my 2 Airport Express set I will do my first back up later. I originally had both the 802.11g and then the 802.11n Airport Extreme base and this was the only time I had to use the ethernet cable to make the set up.

 

[eyecool]

I got mine via Fed Ex today too. Luckily it was regular Fed Ex and came early in the morning. Fed Ex Ground comes late in the day and I would have missed it.

I still haven't taken it out of the box yet. The outside just says Return To:
RMA Dept, etc etc.. Elk Grove CA.

I've never seen an RMA address on an Apple product! Kind of scary.

Opening up the brown box... Sure enough, Time Capsule 802.11n Wi-Fi Hard Drive
1 TB

I'm not even going to mess with it tonight... too tired. I really hope I can use it to 'extend my network' like I have with multiple airport extremes.

Is anyone using it to extend their network?

 

[Kinetic]

Received mine today via Fedex. Ordered on February 2 after returning a new Airport Extreme since I wanted to update to the 802.11n. and the announcement was made about The Time Capsule. I would like to know how the ones who ACTUALLY bought one thinks about it. Not interested discussing how we were ripped off by not having server grade hard drives or it's not worth the money. As I see it I have 14 days to determine that for myself so keep the comment to yourself if you have not ACTUALLY installed one in YOUR home. As stated I was already buying the newer Airport anyway and this was an easier way to keep my computers backed up. I will be backing up 4 Macs so I did get the 1 T TB so space would not be a problem for awhile. How did the installation and first backup go? Are you happy or not with the unit? Thank you in advance for your comments and if you do not have one... PLEASE DO NOT POST!😱

My installation and backups were a breeze. I got the 1TB model from the store. Took my Macbook Pro and connected it via ethernet to the TC and then followed the wizard. It handled setup of the network and the hard drive. I created a new network and after the wizard finished, I went in manually just to check around at the settings. I did change it to a 802.11n 5GHz network only. I then hooked up my old Linksys router to the the TC (disabled DHCP) and have it set up to be my b/g network for my iPhone and Tivo. I haven't messed with my Xbox and PS3 to see how they're working but they should connect to my Linksys just fine. It took about 10 minutes tops to set up. I then had my Air and MBP use the hard drive for backups via TimeMachine. Now the first sync took FOREVER. I lost track and left it going all nite. But since then, I haven't noticed any problems.

 

[xraydoc]

...Now the first sync took FOREVER. I lost track and left it going all nite. But since then, I haven't noticed any problems.

Yep. Apple recommends connecting via ethernet for the first sync, since its got many tens of gigabytes (if not hundreds) to copy the first time.

 

[Diode]

My installation and backups were a breeze. I got the 1TB model from the store. Took my Macbook Pro and connected it via ethernet to the TC and then followed the wizard. It handled setup of the network and the hard drive. I created a new network and after the wizard finished, I went in manually just to check around at the settings. I did change it to a 802.11n 5GHz network only. I then hooked up my old Linksys router to the the TC (disabled DHCP) and have it set up to be my b/g network for my iPhone and Tivo. I haven't messed with my Xbox and PS3 to see how they're working but they should connect to my Linksys just fine. It took about 10 minutes tops to set up. I then had my Air and MBP use the hard drive for backups via TimeMachine. Now the first sync took FOREVER. I lost track and left it going all nite. But since then, I haven't noticed any problems.

Glad to know it went flawless ... that is the exact same setup I will be doing (TC @ 5GHz and a linksys for b/g)

 

[John.B]

Glad to know it went flawless ... that is the exact same setup I will be doing (TC @ 5GHz and a linksys for b/g)

Same here (if it would ever arrive...!)

 

[dL.]

May I ask, since this is a draft N 2.0, will it be possible for this hardware to be updated through firmware in the future when the final draft is done?

dL

 

[ks-man]

Glad to know it went flawless ... that is the exact same setup I will be doing (TC @ 5GHz and a linksys for b/g)

Are you sacrificing something if you don't hook up the linksys and do all router type stuff through the TC?

Can it know to operate at n speeds if you have an n adapter and b/g speeds for iphone/ipt and older computers?

 

[John.B]

dL, I don't believe the final version of 802.11n will vary that much from draft 2.0. If so, at this point it should just be a firmware update.

Are you sacrificing something if you don't hook up the linksys and do all router type stuff through the TC?

Can it know to operate at n speeds if you have an n adapter and b/g speeds for iphone/ipt and older computers?

The point is that g devices will slow down the n network. So you configure an 802.11n network on the 5GHz band that is dedicated to your Mac stuff (Macs, TC, @tv, etc.) and keep the 2.4GHz 802.11g network for everything else (Wii, various PCs, Touch/iPhone, minis, maybe a guest network).

 

[iAmLegend]

This capsule looks great on my desk, but it gets SO hot that I realize it is going to warp the wood over time so I'm gonna have to find a new place to keep it. I thought the heat was a result of the first long backup, but even after it finished with my iMac turned off you can still fry an egg on this thing.

 

[tony-in-japan]

I am still awaiting delivery of my Time Capsule 500GB...

I have Leopard on my mac, but am generally using Tiger for the time being. Any Time Capsule owners using it through Tiger just as a wireless HD, storing music/movies and making back-ups manually (without Time Machine)? If so, what’s your experience?

Also, is it possible to stream music and video from the TC to iTunes? If so, is it smooth?

Finally, for 500GB owners, how much formatted space do you actually get to use from this?

Thanks.

 

[MacHiavelli]

I was thinking of buying one TC and using it as a central storage place to share between my PCs and Mac (assuming both can write to it okay). So I'll just have all my files in one place. Was then thinking of buying a second TC and backing up to that from the first TC.... possible?

Essentially, I just want to use the TC as a little server that both XP and OSX can read and write to irrespective of file type.

 

[rjg001]

Mine arrived yesterday and set up last night was seamless. My wireless network was previously just an Airport Express hooked up to my DSL modem that serves my Macbook, my wife's Dell laptop and our Wii.

I reset the Airport Express and took it down so that I could start from scratch with Time Capsule. I hooked up Time Capsule to my modem and printer in the office. When I completed that, I took the Airport Express to our living room and set it up as a WDS. It is not hooked up to the home theater for Airtunes and the Satellite/DVR box for Directv On Demand. I then started the backup of my Macbook and everything is fine. It went overnight wirelessly and was about halfway done backing up a total of 50 GB as of this morning. I would have done a wired backup the first time but did not have an extra ethernet cable sitting around. Its still taking longer than I anticipated.

I for one am a little disappointed at the inability to partition the drive on Time Capsule. As my Macbook hard drive fills up with music and photos, what I thought I would do with Time Capsule is create a partition to move photos off of my hard drive. So one partition would be for the backup and one for long term storage of photos (in addition to burning the photos to DVD). Looks like I can't do that. Not the end of the world, but that would have been ideal for me.

 

[MacHiavelli]

You can reformat the drive:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/04/apple_time_capsule_unboxing_and_preview.html

... is it not possible to partition it at the same time?

 

[transitman]

What are the benefits of partitioning the TC? I just got mine yesterday and have two MB's and one MBP that I am going to be using to keep Time Machine backups. Should I partition the drive or just keep it as one big space. There is no security issues that I care about between the three Macs so that is the only reason that I would want to partition it. Is there any other reason to partition the 1TB Time Capsule that I just got? I will be using it to store some shared files between the three computers but I can just create a folder for that, right? Thanks for your advice.

 

[Diode]

Are you sacrificing something if you don't hook up the linksys and do all router type stuff through the TC?

Can it know to operate at n speeds if you have an n adapter and b/g speeds for iphone/ipt and older computers?

I'll be using the TC as a router in replace of my linksys because the linksys has 100mbit ports on the hub part of the router.

This would limit N speeds to 100mbit (because all traffic coming into the TC would need to be processed by the linksys and thus sent over the slower 100mbit connection).

Using the TC as the router eliminates this problem (Or if my linksys was a newer model with gigabit ports it wouldn't be a issue).

In this setup you would essentially have two wifi points ... one N and one G. Speeds on the N network are only limited when G devices are connected to the SAME access point ... having two physically separate AP's eliminates this problem entirely.

 

[himansk]

I purchased mine last night, was strange having to restart the TC every time I changed a setting, but apart from that the UI was much better than the other generic routers I have played around with.
TM over TC works as described, not sure how reliable the sparse image files created by TM are though. I have a usb/firewire 1TB drive connected to it to server as a file server and a backup drive for the Mini Time Machine. Havent had any problems yet.

 

[Chad H]

When I click on mine in Macintosh HD it mounts a drive on my desktop. I renamed it and created a folder called i-Tunes. Once that was done I repointed i-Tunes to that folder. I copied my music over and deleted what was on my MBA. It took awhile to copy and sync but its working flawlessy and the harddrive is showing up on my desktop. I even got my Apple TV to set up with it also. Now, that part took about 2 and half hours with 900+ songs and 9 tv shows. Once that was finished any song bought on my apple tv syncs with the time capsule and shows up there and the same goes with buying a song directly from i-Tunes store through my MBA. So far its working flawlessy. I have noticed sometimes though it will randomly un-mount itself. Also, time machine also automatically put the i-Tunes folder in the "dont back up" section since that would be duplicating it. 😀

 

[Fahadeen]

My installation and backups were a breeze. I got the 1TB model from the store. Took my Macbook Pro and connected it via ethernet to the TC and then followed the wizard. It handled setup of the network and the hard drive. I created a new network and after the wizard finished, I went in manually just to check around at the settings. I did change it to a 802.11n 5GHz network only. I then hooked up my old Linksys router to the the TC (disabled DHCP) and have it set up to be my b/g network for my iPhone and Tivo. I haven't messed with my Xbox and PS3 to see how they're working but they should connect to my Linksys just fine. It took about 10 minutes tops to set up. I then had my Air and MBP use the hard drive for backups via TimeMachine. Now the first sync took FOREVER. I lost track and left it going all nite. But since then, I haven't noticed any problems.

can I ask how to hook up the linksys router to TC (TC is the main router and linksys is a bridge for the g network)? from which port does the ethernet cable come out in TC and to which port does it go in the Linksys router? do you have to adjust the linksys router settings at the 192.168.1.1 page ? or is it all done by the airport utility that comes with TC?

 

[Amblinman]

Got mine today. I was at first going to return it once I found out I couldn't partition the drive. Then I thought about it and realized if it came down to it, I could always add another drive to TC.

So, anyway, I'm actually pretty happy thus far. As usual with Apple stuff, setting it up was incredibly easy. I had a wireless network with shared printer up and running in literally a couple of minutes. The speed of my network is much faster too.

All in all, despite my initial concerns, I'm very happy.

 

[JeffMonty]

Issues with TC/Linksys setup

Just got my 500GB TC today. Took a little while to setup because originally I was trying to hook it up directly to my iMac over ethernet but it wasn't working. So I set it up in the other room between my dsl modem and my older linksys b/g router (the WRT54G i believe). Backing up seems to be going very slowly so I had a few questions:

Currently I have the DSL modem going into the TC, then a connection from one of the TC's 3 ports to the incoming port on the linksys. I did this because I have two TiVos with wireless b connections and wanted to be able to have an n connection from the TC to my iMac. I also have a PC hooked up directly to the linksys.

I disabled DHCP on the linksys through the setup page, but I'm not sure it's working right. My TiVo's aren't able to connect to it.

Also, my initial backup seems to be going very slowly: It's been running for about 45 minutes off and on and it has only backed up 9kb (out of about 40GB).

Does anyone have any idea if this is "right" or if there is a different setup that would work better?

Also, will it make much of a difference having the 2 router setup over just the TC; the TiVos only connect once a day for about 10 minutes or so. Should I just remove the linksys from the setup?

Thanks in advance

 

[transitman]

I was at first going to return it once I found out I couldn't partition the drive. Then I thought about it and realized if it came down to it, I could always add another drive to TC.

What makes you think that you cannot partition the drive? I thought that was an option that I had when I was doing my initial setup.