Apple Time Capsule MB277LL/A (AirPort Extreme Plus 1 TB Storage) by Apple Computer
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Digital camera reviews of Apple Time Capsule MB277LL/A (AirPort Extreme Plus 1 TB Storage)
Digital camera Review: DO NOT BUY - MINES DIED!
Summary: 1 Stars
MY 1ST GEN TIME CAPSULE JUST DIED OVER THE WEEKEND. I DIDN'T THINK IT WOULD HAPPEN TO MY TIME CAPSULE... EVEN AFTER READING ALL THE REPORTS OF DEAD TIME CAPSULES AFTER 18 MONTHS OF LIFE.
I URGE APPLE AS A LONG TERM CUSTOMER... PLEASE FIX, REPLACE, AND RECALL THE TIME CAPSULE HARDWARE. CUSTOMERS WANT TO TRUST A COMPANY IN DELIVERING PRODUCTS THAT WORK. THIS PRODUCT IS A FAILURE FROM THE START. WHAT A WASTE OF $500 BUCKS! I KNEW THE CONCEPT WAS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. CREATE A BETTER SOLUTION "BACK-UP" RAID 1/5 SOLUTION THAT WILL INSURE OUR DATA IS SAFELY AND SECURELY BACKED UP!
Digital camera Review: Awesome product
Summary: 5 Stars
Apple gives us another innovative product. If you are sick of cheap back up hard drives that fail in 6 months and slow wireless routers then look no farther. The Apple time capsule is awesome in both respects. It's provides reliable, easy to use massive 1TB hard drive back up storage for your media and important data, and works seamlessly with Time Machine, plus fast Wireless file transfers and wireless internet so no more usb slots used up and cable running amok. The time capsule is very compact and stylish and looks great on any desktop.
Great product, reliable, solid, and secure with multi important functions.
Digital camera Review: It doesn't get much easier or more convenient than this
Summary: 5 Stars
WHAT COMES IN THE BOX
Time Capsule
Plug
Installation Disk
SETUP
If you are using a cable modem, unplug it and wait for the IP address to reset. Then attach the network cable to the Time Capsule and plug the Time Capsule in. Running the installation disk from the Macbook Pro, setup was quite easy. I was up and running in about 10 minutes with 3 wireless devices - My laptop, my daughter's laptop and my wife's laptop. Additionally, I use WIFI at home on my iPhone and the Nintendo DSi.
Installation of the Time Capsule software and configuration was intuitive. Backing up of my Macbook Pro's hard drive takes time (I left mine on overnight) for 279 GB of data.
USE
The device is simple to operate. Just plug in the network cable and plug your device into your surge protector. Setting up the Time Machine's preferences is as simple as accessing the System Preferences folder and choosing Time Machine. If you used another drive in the past, make sure you change the drive on the Preferences or you will get error (-47), initially.
Replacing a prior Belkin, the set up was a fraction of the time. With the ability to create a shared drive, I see limitless options for the operation of the wireless devices in our home. The signal is quite strong and reaches all areas of my 5 Bedroom home without a loss of signal (the most sensitive device for signal loss is my Nintendo DSi on WIFI - I barely get signal in far reaches of the opposite side of my house). Prior to the installation of this product, I had to deal with 2 to 4 bars (out of 5) which varied depending upon how I tilted the iPhone. The same situation was with my Nintendo DSi. Now, I get full strength on the WIFI Signal.
I was able to back up my data by just dragging the folder into the hard drive interface. I did not measure transfer speed but the convenience of a wireless backup is a great concept. I also put all of my songs from iTunes into the hard drive. Instead of storing my songs on my laptop, it is synched with the wireless hard drive which allows more space, if I want to do video editing.
CONSTRUCTION
The drive is a square white box with a multicolor LED indicator light. There are 3 ports for USB devices and a reset button. The top of the unit gets quite hot so I do not recommend placing anything on top of it. The drive is quite quiet and you barely notice that it is on.
OVERALL
I am very happy with the Apple Time Capsule. It serves as both my wireless router, as well as my backup hard drive.
Digital camera Review: Great router, good network disk, decent backup device
Summary: 4 Stars
This product is basically three products: an airport extreme wireless router, a networked drive, and finally, with Leopard, a networked backup system. Overall, it's a very good product, but there are some serious limitation one should be aware of.
As a router, it is fantastic. Typical Apple ease of use, with all configuration done by a very intuitive GUI application.
Unfortunately, it's not a great network drive. The drive appears to be internally connected using a very slow USB connection. You will find that even with a computer connected via Gb/s ethernet, transfer speeds will be limited to around 5-6 MB/s, tops. If you connect two Macs via fast ethernet, you can often get over 40 MB/s transfer speeds, so this is a rather large disappointment, especially for a device which will be getting a lot of use if you use Time Machine.
Time Machine is great in theory, but has a few issues. First, it is a file-based differential backup. That means if even a single bit of a 1 GB file is changed, the ENTIRE file gets backed up. Not only does this take a lot of time, it quickly depletes your backup drive because the same data is added to the disk every regular backup. To get around this, you have to explicitly exclude backing up such files. Good candidates for exclusion are Mail and iDisk caches, as well as virtual machine disk images.
There have also been numerous reports of Time Machine backups being susceptible to corruption. I've experienced this once, myself, after a backup was cancelled, so I can vouch that it happens. However, the problems can often be fixed by deleting the last backup. The next backup will take a long time as the computer must scan the full disk again, but the backups then continue on normally after that.
Time Machine backups have their place, and come in very handy to recover accidentally deleted files. However, they should only be considered part of a larger backup scheme. They probably shouldn't be trusted for a full recovery, and won't be of any help if your computer's drive completely fails, anyway. (How are you going to run Time Machine if you can't boot your computer?) As such, you should image your entire drive regularly, in addition to using Time Machine.
Digital camera Review: Good product, but a few things missing.
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought this so I could have a central wireless HDD for my home network. The problem was, you can't use a router with it. It has to be the router, and it's slower than the router I had. Also, if you're going to get one, make sure you check the price at an apple store or best buy. I thought I was getting a good deal because of the retail vs. the actual price, but 1 week later I saw it in an apple store for $50 less!!