Reviews for Time Capsule - 3 TB

Love having a dedicated backup device on the network which is seamless.

Really not impressed that you can't use it to extend a wireless network with a non-Apple compatible product, at least without having to use an ethernet cable. Now Time Capsule has to live beside my router, negating any wifi usefulness.

Time capsule is something that I really was excited to get. I like the unit, but it is NOT without it's quirks.

#1 Placement. The unit runs very hot, since this has a card drive and router within the case the worst thing you can do for it is place it on a bookshelf with books on either side thereby restricting airflow or on the floor where all kinds of dust & dirt will get into the device. It needs to be in an open area and away from any large electrical or magnetic interference (think microwave, fan motors, older HDTV).

#2 Electrical. It's a hard drive, if you don't have it plugged into a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) you are asking for trouble with the first thunder storm where the power flashes or if your in an area where you get brown outs or spikes. My neighbor couldn't understand why his external HDD's kept failing. I walked in and asked where his UPS was... He said... UPS? He got one and hasn't mentioned any problem since. Some wireless (non mobile phone) handsets also cause interference.

#3 Other hardware communicating with it. Think of the time capsule as a wireless freeway, but if you have any slow devices (wireless b or g) they will slow everything else down with it.

4) It only has 3 Gigabit ports. True, but a gigabit switch is relatively inexpensive and easily increases the number of gigabit ports with no configuration needed. (I have a DLink 8 port switch connected to my setup)

If you have taken these quirks into consideration when setting up the unit you will get excellent results. I get 14 to 20 MBPS down and 11 to 15 up.

Working with other devices:

Setting up a printer was practically mindless with my iMac. I plugged in my HP 2200 USB printer and powered it on. Went to my iMac and went to add a printer and it found it immediately and applied the drivers.

Apple TV and my iMac. Apple TV immediately saw my iMac iTunes library so I could start watching my movies on my HDTV.

Time Machine. Works quite well on my TC, the one challenge is if the backup gets interrupted for any reason you may need to reboot the TC to get the files to allow access again.

iPhone is able to see my iTunes library and sync's automatically to my iMac through the TC.

Back to my mac. Remote access works seamlessly through the TC so I can access my files on my iMac via my Macbook.

Around mid January, I did have some issues with TC, but it was because my ISP was changing over to IPV6 and didn't communicate the changes (they assumed everyone would use their poor excuse for a router) so after about :30 with their tech support they told me what the change was and I adjusted accordingly.

Overall I have been quite happy...

Using Time Machine to back up your computer is painfully slow and requires herculean efforts. To restore my hardrive, it took more than 2 days. In addition, the hard drive in the Time Capsule failed after the second year. This product is terrible. For the same money, you can pick up a cheap wireless router and an external backup drive that wont fail in less than 2 years.

Save your money. There are better options out there.

I bought my first TC (500GB) 6+ years ago with my 24" iMac. It was a breeze to set up and has reliably backed up every hour since - saving my bacon on many occasions. My only "problem" came last year when the TC was full, at which point it obviously and understandably couldn't perform full back-ups and I had to make some manual provisions. At that point I purchased a 2TB TC, which has also worked flawlessly and now backs up both my 24" and 27" iMacs - loaded with large graphic design and motion graphic files. We had a power outage yesterday at which point I lost some unsaved files on my 27". TC saved the day yet again.

I don't understand the problems people are having with set-up and early drive failure. If you have a problem, call Apple's legendary service line and they'll quickly resolve it for you. I never go without Apple Care for extended protection. Oh, and my 6+ year old TC? Still runs like a champ. I just use it for a back up external drive now that my 2TB has taken over as primary router and back up. Apple rocks and the TC is no exception.

I purchased one of these last summer to replace my old Netgear router. The 3tb backup seemed like a nice bonus so I decided I would go for that model as I work long hours and unfortunately don't have time to regularly back up my data (I know, it's bad). On Monday this week, I copied everything off my Macbook to an external drive in order to make space for some development work I had to do. At the end of the day I went to put it all back on my Mac and....clunk! the external drive failed completely, with everything I have worked on for the last 12 months (and it was really important data too with severe implications for the company I work for had it been lost). Fortunately when I got home, I found my time Capsule had EVERYTHING backed up to 2:00am the evening before when I had last shut down my Macbook. I had never made any effort to back this stuff up other than to initially set up the device and forget about it, and it was all waiting for me. I went back to work the next day and found my boss looking very unhappy, he was at a loss as to what we would do without this data. When I told him about the Time Capsule his face lit up, we are all so happy, several colleagues have since gone out to buy TC's and my new nickname at work is "Captain Time Capsule". Thank you Apple, you have saved my rear end, from me and from everyone here at (a competing I.T company) :-)

The time capsule is the best way to store your data for any reason you might have, this product has help me in so many ways its unbelievable! I've had this device for so long and I haven't even used a TB yet! 5 stars!

I love all of my iProducts, but my Time Capsule is an absolute lemon. I was a bit disappointed that it took several days to complete my initial back-up (1TB of data), but I soon had it backing up seamlessly with Time Machine. Alas after six weeks I started getting error messages for no apparent reason and could no longer back-up, nor access any of my old back-ups. Over an hour on the phone to Apple support, who had absolutely no idea what the problem was and ended up recommending that I completely erase the drive and start again. It then took another SIX DAYS to complete its initial back-up and now lo and behold I immediately started getting error messages again and have been unable to complete any more back-ups. The Time Capsule / Time Machine combo has a lot of potential (it was great while it worked!), but needless to say, there's no way I trust this machine with my files.

This is the message I get -

"Time Machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not available."

But the green light is on...I am VERY disappointed and at a loss to know what's wrong.

I DID rate it at 5 prior to that as it's effortless; you don't know it's there and it's automatically working away.

Connectivity is simple, however drops out if you are transferring data and attempt anything else, such as search files or open files on the Time Capsule at the same time.

Using Gigabit is slower than wi-fi and data transfer is the slowest I have come across. I normally use PC and NAS, which is a lot faster. It took 15 hours to transfer 160gb by wireless.I would also suggest that this is a particularly slow hard disk.

Given the price, I would suggest putting a hard disk on a router for more speed, or connecting directly to an external hard drive - save $450 on a 2TB HDD