Simply put, I was disappointed. After just over two weeks with the Time Capsule, I found myself stopping my Time Machine backups manually, constantly fixing little problems here and there, and being just plainly frustrated. Let me explain why.
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Configuration is Complicated: the first backup must be done over wired ethernet, but if you don’t use the Time Capsule as your main wireless router, you need to reconfigure it at least twice, involving Time Capsule restarts each time you make the slightest configuration change. Sure, once its finally set up, the Time Machine just works in the background, but this only brings me to my next complaint.
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Speed is Terrible: even after the initial backup is done, the incremental (and hourly) backups take entirely too long, often staying in the “Preparing to backup” stage for hours at a time, regardless of backup size. Sure, it doesn’t matter how long it takes because its in the background, but that little clock icon spins infinitely, and the backup results in errors a quarter of the time.
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Other Connections Suffer: Trying to browse the internet while one of the Time Capsule backups is working is almost impossible. Since there’s no way to throttle or prioritize the Time Capsule traffic, my internet connection would go out almost regularly during a backup session (which happened every hour). And I wasn’t the only one feeling the hit – those on my network had problems connecting too. This is entirely unacceptable.
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Server Grade Hard Drive My Foot: It turns out the much touted “Server Grade” hard drive inside the Time Capsule is about as server grade as I am. Not the biggest deal, but why advertise it as such?
- SuperDuper Doesn’t Work: This has less to do with the Time Capsule (or Superduper) than it does with the way OSX is built. Basically, you can’t create a bootable copy of your hard drive with SuperDuper and Time Capsule because OSX cannot set the permissions correctly on shared network drives. There are workarounds, but nothing that will allow you to create an instantly bootable copy.
After two weeks of dropped connections, errors, constantly spinning icons, and unbootable backups, I’m finished. Indeed, I loved not having to connect my external hard drives and printer to my computer each time I needed them, but daily usability shouldn’t suffer in the mean time.
I want to be sure and note that just as I’ve said before, any backup solution is infinitely better than no backup solution. In fact, if you plan to use Time Capsule as your main router, and only backup, then I recommend it. In that sense, Time Capsule is a great idea. However, Apple’s unbelievable ability to take great ideas and turn them into great products simply failed with the Time Capsule. Most of the problems it has can (and most likely will) be fixed in the future, but in the mean time, I’d rather not deal with them myself.