Time to ditch the Time Capsule?

If you had more than one Mac or a laptop that was always moving around, an Apple Time Capsule was the best backup solution.

End of story.

At least it would have been if Apple hadn’t discontinued this marvellous product back in 2018. This stunningly stupid move left us in the hands of network hard drives like MyCloud and QNAP that had an interface that looks like it was designed by the same people that brought us the Nissan Cube.

Faced with the Time Capsules demise and the alternatives being atrocious, I have been going around recommending people hang onto and look after their existing time capsules and count their blessings. For those who didn’t  have one I have been encouraging the use of individual external hard disks as apposed to wrestling with network drive alternatives.

However, even if your time capsule is still working it might be time to replace it.

It has now been over 5 years since the Time Capsule was shelved and I’m starting to wonder how secure the hard disks might be. There is a good chance that your backups – while they are reporting all is well– might let you down when the time comes to restore your data. 

In my opinion it is just too important to leave this to chance.

Unfortunately the alternatives for a network back up are still atrocious and while some people consider iCloud to be a backup service it does not include everything and really shouldn’t be relied on for a full computer backup. 

Other online backups services, like BackBlaze, that do include every file are great and are a very good addition to the backup regime but I would still recommend a local backup and to this end the only option is still an external hard drive for each Mac.

So, if you are using Time Capsule, I would consider removing it from your network, and replacing it with something newer before disaster strikes.