Time Capsule

The reviews for Time Capsule have been good overall.  It appears the main issue that plagues Time Capsule is the "Apple TV" syndrome, in that the public does not really know what Time Capsule should be used for, or are attempting to use it for unsupported purposes.

What Time Capsule can do:

Apple advertises the following functionality for Time Capsule.  Asterisked features are also present in Apple's Airport Extreme Base Station.

• Automatic backup with Time Machine
• Server-grade storage
• *Easy wireless networking
• *Up to 5x the performance, 2x the range
• Wireless drive sharing
• *Print without wires
• *Strong security and access control
• *Works with iPhone, Apple TV and more

Time Capsule is therefore a NAS and wireless solution designed to work with Time Machine over the network.   Although networked Time Machine backups can also be done on a networked external drive or third-party NAS solution, Time Capsule offers an all-in-one, fast and easy wireless backup solution.

What Time Capsule can't do:

• Time Machine AND File Storage: Using Time Capsule for both Time Machine backups and file sharing is not recommended since Time Machine claims as much disk space as possible.  This has lead some folks to try and circumvent Time Machine, but have found that Time Capsule cannot be partitioned easily.  Solutions have been noted to create sparseimage files on Time Capsule to segregate your data, but it is still unclear as to whether or not the image files will get overwritten as the Time Capsule disk fills-up.  Other solutions try to limit the space used by Time Machine, but these solutions are also unclear as to the final results.
• Migrate from old Time Machine Data: OS X Migration Assistant does not see old Time Machine backups when attempting to migrate to Time Capsule.  Many folks have attempted to migrate Time Machine backups through other means, but results are questionable.  Third-party utilities, such as SuperDuper, claim to have Time Machine backup migration capabilities.
• Fast wireless backups over wireless-G.  Backups are extremely slow over wireless-G.  A good strategy for this situation involves an initial backup over the wire.

Current Issues

OS X 10.5.3 was released and added the capability to backup wirelessly using battery power.  After upgrading to 10.5.3, some users have noted issues with TM not updating Time Capsule and Time Machine also dropping the Internet connection, but TC and TM resets have fixed these issues.

Time Capsule does occasionally endure file system corruption, although some suggested fixes may help.  Hopefully 10.5.3 also prevents this from occurring, but it is hard to tell, since the fix "...includes fixes for Time Machine compatibility with Time Capsule."