[jmincey]

{quote:title=The article's author wrote:}
"Still, the 15 to 16 megabits per second rate means that 100GB would transfer in 15 hours. Not fast, but reasonable for an overnight-into-the-next-day first backup pass."{quote}

This statement (from the article) is absurd. The span of fifteen hours is not "reasonable" for an overnight-into-the-next-day period of time; rather fifteen hours IS an overnight-into-the-next-day period of time.

If this phrasing isn't straining to make something look good, I don't know what is.

Jeff Mincey

[Glenn_Fleishman]

alansky said:

So you think it's reasonable that the 100 GB backup you started at 9 P.M. on Wednesday wouldn't finish until 12 noon on Thursday? I don't.

That's an open question. I don't think it's fast enough, when it's 4 times slower than a Mac using AFP over the same 100 Mbps connection. But I don't think it's ridiculously slow. These are preliminary numbers; it's possible that the overall backup speed is faster. The AirPort Extreme Base Station does extremely poorly with its USB-connected storage when copying many small files.
I figure most people have 20 GB to 50 GB of data, so 100 GB is extreme. I'll be testing Leopard-connected AFP-shared Time Machine, too, to see what the differential is.

Thrudheim said:

Well, then don't buy a wireless backup solution!
Or, do the initial backup with an ethernet connection, then go wireless.

It's not wireless in this case. I connected via 100 Mbps Ethernet (sorry if that's unclear in this preview) to see how fast Time Machine could go. I was testing from an older Mac (PowerPC G4), but that same Mac was able to hit 60 Mbps just copying one large file over 100 Mbps Ethernet to another Mac. I'll be testing with a variety of Macs and files and such to get a sense of speed.

[Glenn_Fleishman]

jmincey said:

{quote:title=The article's author wrote:}{quote}
> "Still, the 15 to 16 megabits per second rate means that 100GB would transfer in 15 hours. Not fast, but reasonable for an overnight-into-the-next-day first backup pass."This statement (from the article) is absurd. The span of fifteen hours is not "reasonable" for an overnight-into-the-next-day period of time; rather fifteen hours IS an overnight-into-the-next-day period of time.

If this phrasing isn't straining to make something look good, I don't know what is.

Time Machine is incremental, so you suffer the pain just once -- is it truly unreasonable for this device to take that long? Other comments in this thread indicate that the performance I was seeing were nearly 5 times slower than what another reader saw. I'll be testing with many computers, so I'll be sure to see whether 15 to 16 Mbps is the real top speed or not. (That was over a wired 100 Mbps Ethernet connection. I'm running another test now on another computer and network, also on 100 Mbps Ethernet, and seeing the same speed.)

[thewill]

Hi Glen,

Please test on gigabit ethernet too. Macs all the way back to PowerPC G4 have gigabit capability. If the Time Capsule speed is indeed slow, is it because the hard drive is using an internal USB interface? Or is it SATA direct to ethernet? Also, I think Time Capsule should be compared to other NAS and not a Mac to Mac connection. Thx!

[gregr]

Glenn_Fleishman said:

Other comments in this thread indicate that the performance I was seeing were nearly 5 times slower than what another reader saw. I'll be testing with many computers, so I'll be sure to see whether 15 to 16 Mbps is the real top speed or not. (That was over a wired 100 Mbps Ethernet connection. I'm running another test now on another computer and network, also on 100 Mbps Ethernet, and seeing the same speed.)

Strange. Mine is now 40GB into a backup, and it's still averaging roughly 80Mbps. I wonder if perhaps I have larger files, where perhaps you have a greater number of smaller files, or something along those lines; maybe TC is faster with one or the other.

Mine is the 500GB, just for a data point...

[rwmoore]

I have to agree. Never wanted to be a part of a class action lawsuit, but I bought my 802.11n AEBS when I pre-ordered Leopard (a few days before it was released) in anticipation of using it with Time Machine as advertised. I already had an older model of the AEBS 802.11b/g, so I really didn't need the new base station for anything but the shared drive/backup w/ Time Machine. I can't believe Apple is not offering a firmware upgrade or an upgrade option to the Time Capsule, considering the circumstances!

[lipbalm]

How many physical hard-drives are inside the Time Capsule? If there is more than one disk, can the Time Capsule do mirrored RAID? I'm a little worried about trusting half a TB or a full TB of backup data to a single-disk NAS.
Thanks for any info on this you can share.

[Glenn_Fleishman]

thewill said:

Hi Glen,

Please test on gigabit ethernet too. Macs all the way back to PowerPC G4 have gigabit capability. If the Time Capsule speed is indeed slow, is it because the hard drive is using an internal USB interface? Or is it SATA direct to ethernet? Also, I think Time Capsule should be compared to other NAS and not a Mac to Mac connection. Thx!

Of course. This was a first sketch.

Say that this is serial ATA.

The Mac-to-Mac connection is absolutely fair because you can use Time Machine to back up multiple computers to a volume shared from a Leopard client computer with AFP. I'll be comparing speeds against that, as one alternative to Time Capsule is simply to plug a drive into another Leopard computer on the network. If that delivers better performance, it's also more flexible, and may have other advantages over Time Capsule.

[tmedia1]

TC would be on my list if it only allowed remote internet access. Any idea if this feature is present or may be present in a future upgrade?

[stonefingers]

I'm not impressed at all with the performance marks reported here, and even less with the fact that Apple now provides their highly taunted feature of wireless backups to a NAT, but only an Apple NAT.
"Perhaps most surprising about this combination of a Wi-Fi base station and internal network-attached storage (NAS) drive is that Time Capsule doesn't just allow you to back up to its internal drive: you can also perform Time Machine backups to drives attached to the Time Capsule via USB."
Why not just kick us all in the sack while you're at it Steve? Like many others, this feature was one of the main reasons I chucked out $130 to begin with (actually, $180, because I bought the multi-license pack). I hope your stock drops through the floor Apple! It would be quite similar to what happened with my jaw when you de-clawed Leopard AFTER my pre-order.

[Glenn_Fleishman]

tmedia1 said:

TC would be on my list if it only allowed remote internet access. Any idea if this feature is present or may be present in a future upgrade?

You can access AFP shared volumes (and FTP and SMB) if you have a routable IP address on any AirPort Extreme Base Station or Time Capsule sold since 2007. Do you mean something other than that?

[FrankCDN]

Glenn,
If the TC sits upon one's desk, will they hear the HD whirring? What if it's located in one's bedroom (guess you cannot get that quiet in the MW labs ;), i take it it has to stay ON lest one wants to reboot their ABs everytime.
Frank

[HalanR]

Looking forward to the full review Glenn. Thanks for the sneak preview.

I have a 1TB model on order. I'll be using it on a Cisco Gigabit switch. If you can, could you report if you can get a 1Gb full duplex connection, and whether you observe if it's any faster than what you've currently tried?

I sort of doubt it... I'm sure you've probably already hit the max transfer rate.

Thanks again,
Alan

[MrLizard]

That's great Glenn, thanks for answering

With remote access, I was thinking is it possible for me to browse the contents of the time capsule drive from my macbook when I'm away from home, i.e. using the 'connect to server' option within Finder?

Cheers,

Mr Lizard