Time Capsule vs Other Network Hard Drives

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m looking to get a network hard drive as my laptop simply can’t handle the amount of video I’ve got now, not to mention needing a backup solution for other files. While I like the simplicity and features of the Apple Time Capsule, that there are still questions about the reliability worries me, especially for a $300 device. From what I can see, the options are either the Western Digital My Book lines, or the Seagate Go Flex or Black Armor lines. There’s also Buffalo, who I’ve never heard of, and a few other options here and there. I could also go with a diskless system which would be another option as I have dual 320-gig drives in my currently dead desktop with most of what I’d want to transfer to a single drive anyway.

So, any opinions on what’s a good option?

2

If all you want is an external hard drive (i.e. - you don’t need wireless backup capability), just buy the cheapest USB/Firewire enclosure you can find an stick a big drive in it. Something like this. If you can get away with less capacity, there are also lots of 2.5" enclosures out there.

I’m currently trying out a Buffalo 2TB NAS (cheap!) for Time Machine backups. It’s working, but not without some reliability issues.

3

I have a Time Capsule and I love it.

Some details about it that you should know:
[ul][li]This device is both a Time Machine backup drive and a wireless-N router. If you need a new router or the one you have is G, then this might be a good fit.[/li][li]Being an Apple device, they have configured most of it the way they think you need it. This is fine for 95% of the people, but I found the router configuration options somewhat lacking. I wanted to have special time restrictions set up for a subnet with our kids on it, but the router did not provide the capabilities I was used to in DD-WRT.[/li][li]If you don’t have a Mac, then it’s kind of pointless to get a Time Capsule. Sure, you can use it as a backup drive, but there are much cheaper options.[/li][li]A Time Machine backup is not the terminus of a full backup strategy. You should also have another backup somewhere else (both theft and fire will likely affect your computer and your Time Capsule)[/li][li]It really is a good stable router and the Time Capsule backups work seamlessly[/li]You can partition off bits of space to use as NAS space if you wish. You can also plug in an external drive or external printer that can be shared.[/ul]I’m quite happy with my Time Capsule, but it isn’t for everybody. My main requirement was a single Time Machine backup drive that my iMac could access as well as my wife’s MacBook Pro. This did the trick quite nicely.

4

I have a 2tb Hitachi drive, I love. I just pop it into an external case and it works with a eSATA or USB cable.

5

I am using an Airport Extreme Base Station with an external USB drive for both Time Machine backups and miscellaneous net storage.

6

I have a Time Capsule and two Western Digital My Book drives. All of them seem very nice. I use the Time Capsule with Time Machine on my iMac to automate backups and I use the My Book drives for manual backup and shared network storage for our mixed Mac/PC household.

If you want to automate backups for a Mac, the Time Capsule is very streamlined (though if you want to save money you could substitute another product). If you are backing up other computers, I doubt the Time Capsule is an optimum selection.

7

Notes from the field, following a disk failure…

The short answer: Time Machine works flawlessly.

The longer story:
I don’t have a Time Capsule here - I just stuck a 1TB drive into an external enclosure, partitioned and formatted it with Disk Utility, then pointed Time Machine at it. Less than half the price of a Time Capsule, and I have no need for the wireless function.

For the past few months, Time Machine has been unobtrusively taking notes and backing up my files.

This past Tuesday, the unthinkable happened. Instead of booting, my Mac’s hard drive just goes tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. Dead drive. :eek:

A little research later, and I have almost excessively detailed instructions from www.ifixit.com on how to get into the iMac and change the drive. About two hours later, the Mac has a new 1 TB drive. (My good luck to have this happen at this time of year when the shops are open later than usual!)

I plug the external drive in, fire up the Mac with an OS X disc in the CD drive, and step one is to partition and format the new drive. If you can remember it, use the same name that it had earlier - probably “Macintosh HD.” Then, just pick the option to restore with Time Machine. Select the most recent backup and it sets off - after a couple of minutes, it said the process will take about 5 hours.

Five hours later, Mac is back! Desktop icons are right where they were, applications are installed, and not so much as a single email was lost. It’s like nothing ever happened.

If you have a Mac and are not using Time Machine, you need to start using it!