Reviews for Time Capsule - 3TB

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...

49 of 56 people found this useful

This review is for the 1 TB model. Good speed, I had a bit of trouble to set it up but once done, it worked very well. Time machine is an excellent idea.

After two years and a half, 2 1/2, the light went off to never turn on again. Apple does not carry repair parts for this product and to replace it costs 90% of the original cost with only 90 days warranty. Basically it is a sealed disposable unit with very short shelf life.

With over $100 dollars cost per year of service, no post sales support after warranty, it is below expectations for an Apple product.

I already had problems with the i-phone vibrator, mac book pro power cord, mac book pro battery, mac book pro hard drive, mac book pro ram memory expansion and now Time Capsule. Only one Ipad is saved from genius (bar) of Apple.

As the products break down will be phasing out of Apple products. Back to Windows. Good marketing creative department but poor manufacturing quality and support. I know that I am not going to impact the most profitable company of the world, but at least I will not feel a fool.

It was nice while it lasted, but I couldn't recover my $300 engagement ring!!!!

120 of 211 people found this useful

This is an expensive product. But it is also an excellent one.

My wife and I both have had various Macbooks and Macbook Pros for years. We have used Time Machine since its inception, and have always relied on it for backups. Being laptops, we've preferred wireless backup drives.

We have tried using several solutions. The most reliable seemed to be an Apple Airport with drives hooked up to the USB ports. Though this worked fairly well, there was always little problems, mostly centering around drive availability when Time Machine was ready to back up. Time Machine seems pretty sensitive to any significant latency when it's ready to do it's thing, often requiring a reboot to get everything back in line when a glitch happened. Various workarounds helped, but there were still little niggling problems now and then.

Not any more! Since installing our 3 TB Time Capsule, things click along smooth as silk. When Time Machine wakes up to do it's thing, the Time Capsule's drive mounts on my desktop. The backup happens, and the drive disappears. Simple, quick and reliable. I also have two drives connected for extra storage, both of which work great, and three printers shared, all of which are easily accessible from my Macs, my PCs, and even my Linux boxes.

Good job, Apple! Well worth the price!

17 of 19 people found this useful

It installed and worked perfectly with little setup. Wireless worked. Network worked. My printers didn't worked but one has a scanner and that option does NOT work when connected to TC.

However, I have to say the continual error message saying "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."

This is NOT improving reliability. It is evidence of UNreliability. The Apple site says "Back up a lifetime's worth of memories with Time Capsule..." Hmmm. No. it can't even backup (and keep uncorrupted) a week's worth of memories.

Great looking product. Worked brilliantly for a few months. Now, useless and untrustworthy.

22 of 32 people found this useful

Apple is losing the war. 4TB drives are common, USB 2.0 is so passe and where is the Thunderbolt for a shared drive? Drag this product, kicking and screaming, into 2012 with some better shared drive capability and some real capacity

12 of 16 people found this useful

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.

16 of 31 people found this useful