Reviews for Time Capsule - 2TB

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.

I went through two portable drives (Lacie and Hitachi) to back up my MB Pro and MB Air. Apple gave me full credit upon return. Went with the TC to have automatic backup without cords, etc. Setup was no problem and it also serves as my wifi. Range is even better than the Airport Extreme which is a plus. Seems like this product is either 1 star or 5 stars. Fortunately I can give it 5 stars. It is also very quick. Even the initial backup of my Mac Books took less than an hour each for 100GB of data.

I thought it would be a good idea to have time capsule to back up my MacPro and my MacBook to the same drive. I connected my MacPro by ethernet cable and my MacBook through wifii. My MacBook was fine but my MacPro would freeze up had problems shutting down and would run a full back up over and over. Also it took sometimes up to 20 minutes to connect to time machine with the time capsule. Finally I decided to get a regular external hard drive for the MacPro , connected via USB and its working very good without any issues.

Don't waste your money get an airport extreme and an external hard drive, its cheaper and works better.

I barely need the built in hard drive on my Macbook Pro anymore. I save most of my files on the external Time Capsule. It keeps my laptop lean and quick.

This has been a great addition to my home. I currently have an iMac, a Macbook Pro, a Windows PC, and a Printer on the wireless network created by the Time Capsule.

It's almost perfect, but I really wish it had a Thunderbolt Port to transfer very large files at high speeds directly via Thunderbolt cable. Large files take too long to transfer over WiFi or USB.

I have a mixed Mac/PC environment. I wanted something simple for the Mac users, and a better wireless network, so I went with this instead of separate devices. The unit works very well, the wireless is pretty fast, and it's easy enough to set up. Having one box on the counter top is pretty nice, compared to three boxes that I had before. The wireless router has gigabit ports, which would cost you around $80-100 in a separate router. Some people mention limited setup options for the wireless network, but I was able to set up the features I needed fairly easily.

Now for the limitations:
1. The drive is formatted as FAT32, not NTFS. I know this is due to limitations of the MacOS, but the result is that a lot of small files will take up a large amount of disk space, due to the drive addressing. You may find that your 2TB drive may only be able to store as much as a 1 TB drive formatted with NTFS, but YMMV depending on the file size. Large files (like media) will not be much of an issue.
2. You have to put the AirPort Utility software on each PC that you want to connect. I know it's not that big a deal, but nowhere in the setup instructions is this little tidbit mentioned.
3. There is no automated backup software included with PCs. Of course, you can use many other software backup solutions and configure the Time Capsule drive as the backup destination, so this is not that big a deal.
4. The wireless router does not offer WEP as a security choice, so if you have an older device that does not support WPA or WPA2 (for example, some Nintendo Game Boy and DS models fall into this category), then you are basically hosed. You would have to attach a second wireless access point to your network and configure it for the WEP parameters you want. It has been argued for some time that WEP should be dropped due to insecurity, but this may just push everyone to replace their older devices more quickly.

I have only owned this for a short while, so I can't comment on whether it can be used as a DLNA server or other stuff like that.
If you like simple stuff, with easy setup (like most Apple products), then this may be a good choice for you. If you like going under the hood, or like to experiment, and you have some PCs or other devices on your network, then there may be better choices for you.

I love using Time Machine, unfortunately the Time Capsule has a 18-19 month life span. My first one stopped working after aprox. 18 months. Apple at that time exchanged it. Yea. But the new unit, like clockwork, died 19 months later. No replacement this time. Boo. My recommendation (what I'm currently doing and it works great) is getting the AirPort Extreme and adding an USB drive.

Out of the blue, my 2nd generation time capsule stopped working. No signal/status light, and despite trying to reset it and following troubleshooting instructions. Turns out its the power supply. Seems to be a known issue with first generation TCs to just stop working after 500 or so days. Definitely not worth the price if this data back up device cannot outlast a 6 year old G5... Doesn't seem like they fixed the issue with other generations.

Lasted less than 2 years.

Just got the time capsule and it was extremely easy to set up and start using as a wireless access point and as a hard drive and time machine backup. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because i would like more usb ports for attaching other drives and printers.