Apple Time Capsule as Backup

I'm afraid that in my opinion (*) the Time Capsule is an awful device as far as being a "NAS" is concerned - it has no way of creating individual shared folders and simply presents the root of the drive there for anyone to mess with, offers no data security in itself and in our limited testing has provided no more than mediocre performance.

As with all Apple kit it looks nice enough and it does obviously provide Time Machine backup for your Mac (but with no redundancy if the drive in the Time Capsule fails) but I can't say with hand on heart that I would ever happily entrust my data to a Time Capsule - there are many other solutions that I would rather use. Just Googling around and looking at some of the reviews on the Apple website throw up a fair old number of complaints about power supply failures even with the latest Rev 4 units which supposedly were "fixed" - of course when you Google you only generally tend to find complaints so I may be being unkind / unfair.

Phil

(* insert time-worn note that "opinions are like backsides - we all have them and only your own doesn't stink..." )

Thanks for the advice. Now a simple question or two, or a question from a simpleton, can the NAS drive be set up just to backup the UnitiServe and is the drive just connected by ethernet to the network router? I am running out of ethernet sockets so would there be a loss of quality if I have to use an ethernet hub

Wasn't the original question about using time capsule as a backup drive and not a NAS drive?

I would have thought this would be a great solution.

I use one to back-up my macs and has proved very reliable.

Yes it doesn't mirror disks but it's plug and play and you can easily check it's working. If you do this it would be very unfortunate for both drives to have failed together and not notice one before the other has gone down.

Yes the Time Capsule provides a fine solution to back up my UnitiServe.

I run Lacie's Silverkeeper software on my Mac to back up my uServe to the Time Capsule.  It works just fine. 

Now if I ever need to restore, the problem will be that this was not a backup prepared BY the uServe.  So, as I understand it, I as the end-user/consumer could not restore it as a uServe store but certainly could use it on a NAS as share data.  (PHIL DID I GET THAT RIGHT?)

Come to think of it, I have not tried to set up the Time Capsule as a backup device via the uServe interface.  I should try that.

In order for the HDX to use the time capsule you need to enable samba or SMB sharing on the capsule. I don't own one so cannot help further but its an option in there.

Would you feel confident enough in your backup for me to delete every bit of music from your UnitiServe today while you are out at work and know that you wouldn't lose anything?

Have you tried restoring your "backup" back to your UnitiServe?

I would feel reasonably confident that if you are backing up your unit as you describe that you would not be able to restore that backup to your UnitiServe without getting me involved to manually do it.

Possibly correct - it all depends on how the Mac has copied the files and where they are stored and the access rights to those files and folders - for example you MAY have backed the files up to a folder which has its access nailed down to specific users or you MAY have had your Mac back up the files to a location that is only accessible via AFP (Apple File Protocol) and not SMB.

Remember ... "A backup isn't a backup unless you know you can restore from it."

You should certainly use the backup functionality of your Naim Music Server as that's what it is there for - to produce a backup structure that can be easily restored.

Cheers

Phil

Hi Garyi,

I'm pretty certain that the SMB sharing functionality is enabled by default on the TimeCapsule so that shouldn't be an issue...

Cheers

Phil

The OP was asking whether he could use the spare capacity of his TimeCapsule rather than adding a dedicated NAS and asking for any advice ...

As a way to back up a Mac using Time Machine they are very good - albeit I would not use one for this as they have no redundancy in the form of a second drive but if you're happy to accept this then by all means go for it.

However as an actual NAS they are incredibly basic and have a number of limitations.

When used as a storage location for a Naim Music Server it's no more difficult to set the Naim Music Server to back up to the TimeCapsule than it is to get it to back up to a proper NAS however your data is more vulnerable on a TimeCapsule and more liable to be fiddled with as it is lumped into a common shared folder rather than being allocated a separate network share.

Remember it's not just drive failure that you need to concern yourself about ... 

Cheers

Phil

Thanks Jon,

At the moment the NetGear ReadyNAS Duo V2 can be easily had for <£100 and 2Tb drives seem to be down to the £75 mark so for the same price as a 2Tb TimeCapsule you can have 2Tb of mirrored storage that also gives you Time Machine functionality - OK so you don't get the router and wireless access point functionality of the Time Capsule but most people already have that anyway.

The choice is obviously the OPs to make - all we can do is provide appropriate information to allow an INFORMED choice to be made.

Cheers

Phil 

Thanks for the detailed responses, Phil!

(Just so you can sleep at night . . . the Time Capsule backup I described is an 'extra' backup I've been doing.  I use the backup facility of the uServe to do a daily differential backup to my Synology NAS. 

Given that I want more than one backup, it sounds like I'd be better off copying the backup on the NAS to another drive.)