Reviews for Time Capsule - 2 TB

We have a household full of laptops, many with digital photos that weren't getting backed up in a timely fashion. We really appreciated the smooth way that Time Machine integrated with this unit. The wifi power was also great. After we had it connected for about a month wifi internet started dropping, wifi network remained in place but no internet (internet still worked on the Ethernet connection), and the disk "could not be found." Tried half a dozen resets and other config changes to no avail--the thing is dead now and I've hooked up my old Cisco router. Hope apple will honor the warranty without a lot of hassle.

21 of 28 people found this useful

i never know when the time capsule will stop working. i back up when i can, then the thing will die for a few months. i haven't been able to find any way to make it work when it does that. then after a time, it will work perfectly fine again. not terribly useful.

25 of 44 people found this useful

How does your backup drive die before the computer its supposed to back up? Worked great for about 2 years until it stopped working completely, I tried to do a full restore now it doesn't even show up on the computer. Way too expensive to only last this short of time. Not making that mistake again!

126 of 152 people found this useful

This is a follow-up of a previous review by me. Still not able to sync with MacBook Pro after initially working for a number of months.

The major flaw is this:
It is not a good idea to combine two devices into one. In this case, the router works, but for some arcane reason, the hard drive does not sync. So, I am stuck with this very hot device, and I expect the heat will cause the router to fail sooner than it would have otherwise. If the router had failed, then I would have had to ship the entire device for repair and lose the use of the router, or buy a separate router.

Better to keep things simple (Apple, remember?):
Keep the two devices separate. Then, if one device fails, it doesn't involve the 2nd device.

76 of 85 people found this useful

The idea is nice but the implementation is poor:
- Every hour my MBP slows down significantly for a while (this is with an SSD drive)
- Latest firmware v7.6.1 is very buggy, disk disconnects randomly and frequently (net connection is fine) with the only cure being a reboot.
- You get 2TB of disk space but there's no way to instruct it to leave half of it allocated for your files

54 of 68 people found this useful

I love Apple products because of the simplicity. I have a network of Apple products, so thought the Time Capsule would be the best way to connect all of them. Unfortunately, there's nothing special about this device to warrant the extra money. Moreover, it has been buggy as heck:

1) No QOS, meaning you can't prioritize bandwidth to different computers. This is a bummer when you're in the middle of a movie and buffering starts because someone else in the house just started a big download.
2) You can't control when the backups happen. The Time Capsule wants to back up every hour, and you can't override that to make it back up once a day instead. You have to download 3rd party software which is a bit kludgy.
3) The wireless interferes with the wireless mouse and keyboard. I have to have the time capsule hardwired to my iMac, because whenever it tried a backup the wireless would overpower the bluetooth on the mouse and keyboard, making typing and scrolling super slow.

138 of 165 people found this useful

Time machine is not a place to store the documents that you never want to lose. Its a just a way to keep your computer in the state its in if it ever breaks down on you. The way it works is that it backs up all your documents but once the storage drive starts getting full it will delete some of your first back ups so it could continue backing up your current files (with out telling you). So all the stuff from your first back ups that you deleted (for say) before your second back up will be gone once you back up your files like a year later. Its better to just transfer files to a external hard drive like the old days. this might be good for a desktop with a 2 TB drive but not for a laptop with 500GB of memory. Think about it before you buy it to know what you really need.

150 of 212 people found this useful

This morning, my Time Capsule (where I keep all of my music files) stopped working. No noise no explosion, no talking message, the TC just stopped. That was after only 2 years. I had 380 GB of commercial music that I produced, wiped out! Wait, it gets worse.....THAT WAS THE SECOND TIME! Almost like clockwork, I had a first generation which crapped out after 26 months, and this morning, a 500GB 3rd generation TC bit the dust; which was replaced under warranty. My mother always told me "First Time, shame on them" , "Second time, shame on ME!". Do I roll the dice with a 100 dollar coupon that Apple was nice enough to email me? Or 2 years from now I write another paragraph about how it failed and I'm a moron? Somebody please give me your opinion? Please?

198 of 224 people found this useful

It worked fine almost 18 months. Then, it died. I looked to get it repaired (I think it is just a power supply issue), and there is no one that can fix it. The sad part is, I have hundreds of movies and TV shows worth mega bucks from Apple TV and iTunes. Customer support cannot help. "You should have had it backed up" they say. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to keep back-ups syncronized on the 4 Macs, 2 iPads, and 1 Apple TV.

101 of 124 people found this useful

If you use a Time Capsule as a wireless base station, it works fine. But, if you want it to join an existing network, you'll be out of luck. You can join an existing network, but you'll get shocking performance: 2MB/sec absolute maximum, and < 1MB/sec most of the time.

Spent an hour with Apple support, and they told me that "a Time Capsule is not meant to be used as a wireless client". (Never mind that you can explicitly configure it that way.)

For me, that's a show stopper because I wanted to physically separate my backup drive from my Mac Pro; I cannot use the Time Capsule as a base station because the cable modem access point is right where the computer is.

The recent 7.6 firmware upgrade did not fix this. I'm very disappointed with the the entire thing. The one reason I bought the Time Capsule was to have a physically separate backup drive, but it cannot be used that way.

49 of 60 people found this useful