Time Capsule - 2TB

Reviews for Time Capsule - 2TB

Customer Reviews and Ratings

3.0 out of 5 stars

Based on 250 reviews

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Excellent, but needs Thunderbolt Technology

    • Written by from Wesminster

    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.

    75 of 76 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Worth the risk!!!

    • Written by from round rock

    The Macintosh Time Capsule is the best $300 I've ever spent! After reading some reviews that the TC power source failed in some cases becoming "a brick," I was leery. I almost didn't buy it. I am so thankful I did. I've had it for a few months now. My small business runs from my mac, my truck, and my tools. On a job yesterday, the laptop and some other items were stolen from my truck. I bought a new MacBook yesterday afternoon and, using the TC, reloaded everything from the old laptop in AN HOUR. I did have to re-install Microsoft office from the original DVD disks, but other than that, it was SEAMLESS! I'm back in business!!! Great product! Saved me from LOADS OF AGGRAVATION and thousands of dollars, literally.

    77 of 81 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Dead after 2 years

    • Written by from Austin

    My first TC lasted 18 months. My replacement lasted a whole two years. I'm going back to Linksys.

    78 of 85 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Great product, but a few restrictions / limitations

    • Written by from Whitefish Bay

    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.

    76 of 81 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Worked well until it completely failed

    • Written by from Fort Wayne

    This worked well fro three years until it completely failed, leaving me with a worthless brick filled with my now unreachable back-ups. Repair tech identified it as common overheating problem that fried the power supply. Unit was on shelf all by itself w/ 3+ feet clearance all around.

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Fixed my problem

    • Written by from Boca del rio

    After weeks of thinking if a good router would fix my problems I decided to buy the Time Capsule because I needed a hard Drive too, so It was my best Choice. It was a lot of money, and Here in Mexico es more expensive. But i bought It and I'm very happy with my TC.

    My problem was that my internet was very poor in my bedroom cause I had the modem in the leaving room, and all the employees of the Store told me that the TC wasn´t going to help me with that, well.. They were wrong! now I can watch Plex on my appleTV all day without cuts and I can go to the badroom and surf very good the web on my iPhone haha. And about the space of the hard drive no coments, 2TB is a LOT so I´m downloading a lot of movies and finally can see them without the cables and no interruptions!

    Worth It every "peso"!!

    (Sorry for my bad english)

    75 of 80 people found this useful

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  • 2.0 out of 5 stars

    Don't combine two devices into one

    • Written by from Augusta

    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.

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  • 3.0 out of 5 stars

    Crashed but HD was still good.

    • Written by from Salisbury

    I had 2 of the 500gig TC's. My first one just died but I think it was just the power supply went south. I pulled the Hard Drive out, purchased an HD USB Caddy and all of my files were still there. Transferred the files over and all is well. I do agree for the price of the TC it needs to last longer, but DON'T throw your HD out until you check it. The caddy cost $50 from Best Buy and saved me a lot of heartache...

    73 of 79 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Best purchase since my iPad 2

    • Written by from Washington

    We bought the TIme Capsule after about 2 years of talking about it. The final straw was moving to a new place, getting set up with a new wireless router from our internet provider, and finding that the Wifi connection was terrible. So, if we were going to buy a new router anyway... why not? After experiencing a total system crash once before, I can't tell you how much peace of mind the automatic and wireless backups have given me. And on top that, the wireless is ridiculously fast and expansive. If you're thinking of buying an Airport Extreme and have the means, I would strongly urge to you to consider spending the additional $129 and getting the added benefit of the backup drive.

    74 of 81 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    my second time capsule and would buy 3rd

    • Written by from LOCKPORT

    bought first one in 2007 still working perfectly and just ordered 2 tb version as this current one is on duty 5 years now and no problems yet, but not looking for any i also have 2 airport express added to this and i seen issues with one of those a couple times it dropped out and re-finds itself in network no clue why set up is a breeze like advertised all summed up in 2 words (it works)

    71 of 76 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Excellent

    • Written by from Rock Hill

    Bought time capsule for the office. Works great. It is backing up a mac mini server and 4 MacBooks in the office. no problems at all.
    And the wireless range is great also. it covers the entire office.

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Liked the concept but in the end hated it, too much of a headache for me.

    • Written by from Alameda

    I bought the time capsule hoping it would be easy out of the box. Well, I was wrong. At first it worked fine with Leopard. Then when I updated to Snow Leopard, it stopped working. It wouldn't back up. It kept freezing and I had to restart the computer again. Reset the Time Capsule and setting several times. I also called tech support several times regarding this matter and it still isn't working. It hasn't backed up anything and it has been reset back to factory setting. The router works great though, but that isn't why I bought it. I wanted it to back up my pictures, videos and music. What good is it to have the router working great with no way of backing up your computer. Do I want to lose everything I have??? Of course not, so I'm returning it after dealing with tech support for the past two weeks.

    88 of 110 people found this useful

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  • 3.0 out of 5 stars

    Meh

    • Written by from Gardnerville

    Purchased December 27, 2011 after hard drive in my MacbookPro (Early 2011) died earlier in the month. Apple was kind enough to replace with larger drive. I know of no other company that would've done that. Used it as a backup disk and wireless router until late August 2012 with very, very few issues. I really did forget about the backups because they occurred int he background seamlessly until Aug 2012, when I had an issue with MacbookPro that required Apple to reinstall Mountain Lion. Thankfully, I was able to restore from my backups on TIme Machine. Saved my hide. All my backups were there. Genius Bar recommended I keep my backsups, but begin a full new backup. Made sense. Since the, I've had a terrible time with TC. After backup errors persisted, I was advised to erase disk with old backups (not a huge deal, but definitely not my first choice). This worked until Mid-September when I was unable to get TM to backup to TC properly. Consulted support community with no luck. Apple Care rep was able to get things back to working order.

    I just feel like since the problems began, it's taken too much time and energy than I would expect. Glad I have TC, but it definitely isn't as intuitive or user friendly as one should expect from Apple. Could definitely use some improvements. Despite problems, I think I'd still go with TC over other drives just because of support form Apple

    69 of 73 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    New 2 TB Time Capsule

    • Written by from Langley

    Just got this yesterday. I'm not the most computer savvy person but only took me 20 minutes to set everything up. First back up took over night as the book said. Very easy to use. WiFi works great. Still get a signal 50 feet outside my front door. I set up a Guest user and password. No problem.

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Doesn't last

    • Written by from Richmond

    Lasted less than 2 years.

    109 of 156 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Major Disappointment! Does NOT last. Waste of $!!!!

    • Written by from Princeton

    As with so many other reviews I have seen on here, our Time Capsule worked perfectly fine for about two years and then just quit working. It will not even power up and of course the warranty is no longer valid. I would guess that a lot of these great reviews will turn into one star reviews within two years. It would be a great product if it would just KEEP WORKING!!!!!

    70 of 80 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Great Hardware, lacks many features

    • Written by from Rusagonis

    The apple time capsule is definitely great to have and makes backing up your computers a breeze. However it does have one major draw back compared to other router, it lacks QoS which allows you to prioritize bandwidth. This is a crucial feature to have with any home network that involves multiple computers as you quickly realize that performing nearly any task with 3 or more computers connected to a network will becoming increasingly more difficult.

    For the price of $299, this device lacks the more advanced features that make it even worth while having. I'll be putting mine up for sale on and looking for a much cheaper solution, as you can get a dual band router, with a 2TB networkable hard drive for considerably less than the cost of this.

    Its a great idea apple but it needs some significant firmware improvements before I'll recommend this to even the simplest user.

    80 of 100 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Too Fragile

    • Written by from Claremont

    I have had two TCs and both of them failed before the end of the second year. Considering, that the limited warranty lasts only 1 year I was left empty handed. It is very frustrating that Apple would sell a product that cannot last, even more when it is sold as being a reliable and easy way to backup your files!

    72 of 85 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    It's worth it!

    • Written by from Miami

    It's 2TB. It can be used as a router, external hard drive and a back up drive. I purchased the refurbished item of this on best buy for a cheaper price and have no regrets.

    Remember, it's not just used for time machine back ups, but a wireless external hard drive and router as well. Good job Apple.

    63 of 67 people found this useful

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  • 3.0 out of 5 stars

    Out of Time Capsule

    • Written by from Charlotte

    As a long term solution you would be better off buying a stand alone back up device and if you need wireless get a wireless router. I am about to be on my 3rd time capsule in 2 1/2 years.

    For ease of use, set-up and trouble free operation (if it is working) is excellent though. It is beyond my understanding why the do not last longer? Planned obsolescence I guess?

    66 of 73 people found this useful

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