![]() It seems that power fluctuations that any other devices would take in stride can wreak havoc with a Time Capsule. This may be related to power issues that impaced many users, or maybe not. All other devices on the same circuit worked fine, but it took a dedicated power line devoted to the Time Capsule for everything to work properly. ![]() I went through another two Time Capsules that would not complete the start-up sequence.Īlthough strange, the problem seemed to be the power feeding the Time Capsule. After replacing the cable modem, and being able to successfully plug it into my iMac, the problem persisted. The Time Capsule showed a solid amber light that could not be corrected with a factory reset. In less than 10 minutes, I was up and running … for a week. I brought the new unit home and configured it. I was quite unhappy that many months of backups were gone, but machines do break. The next day I went to the Apple Store and bought a replacement. I had long beaten the 18 month Time Capsule funerals that were recently reported… but then things turned ugly.Ībout two weeks ago, my Time Capsule died, taking my home network down with it. Outside of some errant sparse image problems that required a reformat, all was well. I created a setup where, with staggered backups starting between 2am and 4am, each Mac gets backed up once a day. TimeMachineEditor (a free utility that I highly recommend), allows you to set Time Machine to back up as frequently or infrequently as you like. But if you are using it to wirelessly back up multiple Macs, hourly backups slow everything down to a crawl. This makes perfect sense if you’re just dealing with one Mac wired into the Time Capsule, since it really doesn’t slow anything down. Working with Time Machine in Leopard or Snow Leopard, the Time Capsule updates its backups every hour. Here’s one from TUAW taken as an example: In fact, horror stories about Time Capsule are so numerous that I haven’t been even remotely tempted to try one out, ever. The same, in reality, is true of any external drive: I’ve owned several, and not a single one of them has not failed me eventually, occasioning data loss. The risk of using Time Capsule remains, to my mind, unacceptable, as witnessed by the continued existence of the Apple Time Capsule Memorial Register, in witness to all the defunct devices that perished in active service. Users have alleged that this is due to a design failure in the power supplies Apple has confirmed that certain Time Capsules sold between February 2008 and June 2008 do not power on or may unexpectedly turn off and has offered free repair or replacement to affected units. In October 2009, several news sites reported that many Time Capsules were failing after eighteen months. ![]() Not something I would want to trust.Īpple offers its own in-house network-attached storage backup device, Time Capsule, to use in conjunction with Time Machine: one of its key features is the ability to back up a system and files wirelessly and automatically, which eliminates the need for a separate external drive to be attached. Therefore, it’s exposed to the same risks as the computer: theft, fire, flood. Nevertheless, a Time Machine backup drive must remain attached to the computer, or relatively near it. In Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Time Machine is admittedly much faster and more reliable too. For example, it would say preparing backup forever. Time Machine was somewhat buggy and slow in Mac OS X Leopard 10.5. Of course you can always use Apple’s Time Machine to create a copy of your data. Using Time Machine or Apple’s Time Capsule exposes one to unacceptable risks So what backup service to choose? To help one with this, there is a great tool called Backup Bouncer that can be used to verify metadata backup and restore for Mac backup software. This is the digital equivalent of driving uninsured or opening a undeclared bank account at a Latvian bank: it can seem a clever idea at the time, but time seldom stands still when risk-taking is involved. The characteristic reaction to this, by many users, is simply to ignore the issue altogether and bank on the fact that data loss is unlikely to occur. Mac is among the most difficult systems to backup and restore correctly: Macs have peculiarities resource forks and packages, for example, are unique to the Mac, and not every service handles them well.įew people pay much attention to this until they experience data loss through hardware damage, material error, theft or some other act of God the consequences of which can prove impossible to repair.
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