Macintouch just posted a comprehensive review by Robert Mohns on Time Capsule. The full article can be found here. The review notes various issues, best practices, tips, pros and cons, conclusions and links to more info.
For anyone who needs to back up wirelessly, Time Capsule is a great option. There is no question that anyone who uses a computer will lose data. The only question is, do you have it backed up and ready to restore? Time Capsule provides a seamless wireless connection to Time Machine.
I don’t consider Time Machine an adequate sole backup system for any critical data, but in conjunction with a regular backup (clone or partial), especially if the media can be taken off-site, Time Machine/Time Capsule provides a great way to quickly and easily retrieve lost data.
If you accidently delete a file, or make a change and save, then realize that you needed the original version… Time Machine is a life-saver.
Robert Mohns did a great job analyzing performance in his review.
Our big concern with Time Capsule was performance. When we previously tested the AirPort Extreme 802.11n with a USB drive, in early 2007, it had trouble with sustained writes and exhibited generally unimpressive performance.
Time Capsule doesn’t share AirPort Extreme’s problem. It’s not a speed demon, but it is very consistent, yielding 10.2 MB/sec. for reads and 8.9 MB/sec. for writes in AJA Kona System Test, over a 5-GHz, 802.11n wireless connection from our Mac Pro. Over Gigabit Ethernet wiring, we saw 17.1 MB/sec. for reads and 12.6 MB/sec. for writes.
The external USB hard drive we tested was somewhat slower, with 16.7 MB/sec. reads and 8.9 MB/sec. writes over Gigabit Ethernet wiring. But, using the USB disk over 802.11n wireless was much slower, yet, than using the internal disk. Still, this performance far outstrips the AirPort Extreme we tested last year, which showed just 3.6 MB/sec. reads and 2.1 MB/sec. writes — at best!
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