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Thursday, July 30, 2009, 08:30 am
Apple introduces 2TB Time Capsule backup appliance
Apple doubled the capacity on its Time Capsule router with integrated hard drive Thursday, giving users a full 2 terabytes of storage in the top-of-the-line model.The new model is available for $499 from Apple.
Rumors of a 2TB Time Capsule first broke this April, when a picture of a box with the expanded capacity first appeared at ClubMac. At $499, the 2TB model has replaced the price point of the 1TB model. The lower-end Time Capsule is now available for $299.
Earlier this year, the company introduced new AirPort Extremes and Time Capsules with dual-band support. The new models allow simultaneous 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz dual-band networking. With dual-band, base stations can simultaneously support iPhones and other 802.11b/g devices operating at 2.4 GHz, while also broadcasting 802.11n wide signals in the 5GHz band to maximize throughput for notebooks and devices such as Apple TV.
Time Capsule drives were also made accessible over the Internet for MobileMe subscribers. Additionally, the new Guest Network feature allows users to set up a secondary network for friends and visitors with Internet-only access without handing out a WiFi password.
Time Capsule pairs the existing AirPort Extreme with a hard drive to serve as a backup appliance for Leopard machines running Time Machine, in addition to acting as a simple file and print server. It is offered for both Mac and Windows users, although Windows PCs (or Macs not running Leopard) won't have Time Machine and therefore will access it only as a regular file and print server.
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Previous Comments View All
doesn't your setup backup the same? can't you daisy chain, i agree, gee 500 for the setup
i still think apple should make a home server with switch out drives, so two can mirror and can add others
could you use the usb powered drives say from iomega (i have those) and daisy chain those
but adding storage should be easier
Time Capsule = Sloooooooooooooooow
Why does Apple keep making products that I want to buy?
After a little over a year's worth of Time Capsule use, I'm not sure you really do want to buy one.
I put two units into service, each of them backing up about six or seven computers apiece. I "staggered" the initial backups so that the units would not be overloaded. Even with just one computer backing up at a time, the backup was unbelievably slow, and that was over a gigabit LAN. Other systems with locally attached disks were faster. The only bottleneck I can see would be the processor used in the Time Capsule.
Some computers never worked properly with Time Capsule. The issues I saw most were backups that stalled for no reason, sudden prompts for the Time Capsule password, and sparse disk images that became corrupted. It didn't matter if the computer was an older PPC model or a new Intel system.
A year and two months out of warranty, one of the Time Capsule units died with a flashing yellow light. Opening it up revealed some kind of a reaction that had taken place in the thermal transfer pads--a kind of oil had leaked out of them and covered the circuit board. Apple has been unwilling to even offer a pro-rated price on a new one.
Even when they work, these things run frightfully hot.
\One unit still survives and works about as well as it ever did. Which is really too bad, as this could have been such a cool idea...
Actually I have an externally FireWire drive that I use for TimeCapsule - the drive I have attached to the Airport is for file archive - ISO images. And actually having the external drive is nice since I can unplug it from the Airport and plug it directly into a system when I need to do a full backup before a clean install or hard drive replacement and that is way faster than doing it over ethernet. so I will not run out and buy one of these - but may someday - gotta get my broken iPod fixed and my iPhone 2G reception issue addressed first.
Time Capsule = Sloooooooooooooooow
Not! Mine isn't slow at all. The initial backup takes a couple hours, but other than that its fast. Snow Leopard is supposed to improve Time Machine backup/restore speeds.
Nice update, but when the hell are they ever going to update the AppleTV?!?! 40GB on the low end and only 160 for the "high end"??? I know its not a big product in terms of sales, and there may be a much improved version in the pipe, but come on... at least update the HD to a respectable size and I may think of getting one...
As for the Timecapsule being slow, yeah, it is when you're doing the initial transfer, and if you're backing up large files over wireless, but I've found that not having it update my scratch folders where I move large dataset files around keeps the versions I care about backed up and performance in a good (enough) range.
Is there a way to copy across a backup from one TC to another? If I got the new one will I lose all my backup history?
Nice update, but when the hell are they ever going to update the AppleTV?!?! 40GB on the low end and only 160 for the "high end"??? I know its not a big product in terms of sales, and there may be a much improved version in the pipe, but come on... at least update the HD to a respectable size and I may think of getting one...
As for the Timecapsule being slow, yeah, it is when you're doing the initial transfer, and if you're backing up large files over wireless, but I've found that not having it update my scratch folders where I move large dataset files around keeps the versions I care about backed up and performance in a good (enough) range.
Apple TV doesn't really need a big HD, I have the 40GB model, my iTunes library is nearing a gig and I just stream everything. Why would anyone buy the 160GB model?
I use Drobo, and think this is a better long term investment. Has anyone attempted to use Drobo with Airport Extreme? Asking because I plan to play around with this very set up.
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Why does Apple keep making products that I want to buy? I really can't afford this right now and already have an Airport Extreme with externally attached 500GB hard drive - then again I have only 100GB free space on it already - and I would have one less device (with USB and power cord) and maybe it would be faster. and the guest network feature is nice. and I could sell the old devices.