To do so, you just run a OS X Leopard program called Time Machine, which finds your Time Capsule—or any locally connected hard drive—and uses it as a backup HDD. Every day, more or less, by wireless or wired network, Time Machine (the software) and Time Capsule (the Wi-Fi router with a HDD in it) will continue to log changes you’ve made to your data. The physical drive inside comes in 1TB or 500GB capacities, and is a server drive rated for continous 24/7 use for quite awhile.
[UPDATE: Jason just reminded me that last year, some people found the drives in the old Time Capsule to be rated for as a network server drive, but also, for consumer machines. So it’s not as robust as some drives you’d find in, say, a data center.] Last fall, the Time Capsule saved my butt when my laptop’s drive died overnight. Miraculously, after dropping in a new HDD, the OS X install discs asked me if I wanted to restore from a previous Time Capsule/Machine backup, and ended up losing only 2 hours of data. Two hours!
So, if you want Mac backup in one simple unit, there is no better solution than a Time Capsule. And this one is slightly improved over the last. But unlike a year ago when the first generation drive came out, there are other options that are slightly cheaper. More on these later, after the TC performance tests. First, let’s look at the improvements Apple has made in this hardware and to the previous generation’s via firmware.
• Dual Band: Two radios instead of one so you can run in 802.11n on both the 5GHz frequency (very fast, although not as interference or wall/door resistant as 2.4GHz) and on 2.4GHz, while older devices with 802.11b or g simply run on the 2.4 band.
The last generation of Time Capsule had both band options, but you had to choose one, and that meant almost always choosing 2.4GHz for max compatibility. Having dual channels—which show up as separate Wi-Fi access points but are on the same network—gives you another lane to drive in while the one is saturated with media streaming, a backup or giant file transfers. Somehow, the new antennas are 6DB stronger than the previous antennas, according to the AP Grapher program.
