What about transferring Time Machine backup data from an existing drive to Time Capsule? That's the situation I'd be looking at if I bought one.

I'm looking forward to a thorough review.

Of course how Time Capsule works with the generic, Time machine functionality both with the internal drive and drives hanging off the USB port, but also how it works as a network drive independent of Time machine.

Looking forward to your results. Thanks !!

Glen,

When you do your review, can you comment on the following:

• Can the time machine drive be partitioned?
• Can an attached USB drive be partitioned?
• Can the drive be used as a basic network attached drive for drag-and-drop storage
• Any luck remotely accessing the drives contents over the internet?

Thanks in advance!!
-Mr Lizard

"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."

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.

It sounds like something is amiss with your network...I'm backing up to a TC right now over gigabit ethernet, at about 10MB/sec (80Mbps). Even 100Mb ethernet should be able to sustain very close to this.

I bought a 500 Gig Time Machine at a local Apple Store today. I was unable to get it to recognize my router. After trying everything I could think of, including changing the CAT 5 cable, I called Apple Tech Support. We finally solved the problem by unplugging both the cable modem and the Time Capsule from their power supplies, waiting five minutes, plugging the modem back in, and after it connected to the internet, plugging the TC back in.

After configuring the TC, my system wouldn't recognize the TC's disk. That entailed another call to tech support. The solution was to reset the TC, using Network Utility, and then reconfiguring TC.

The disk shows up under the Sharing section of a Finder Window's sidebar; it is not in the Devices section as are USB and FireWire drives.

I tried to copy the Backups.backupdb file from my existing firewire backup drive to the TC drive, but it wouldn't copy; al that happened was the Finder's sound that indicates a file copy or move was completed, but nothing else happened. So it appears that it is not possible to copy an existing Time Machine backup from one drive to another—or at least, not to a Time Capsule volume.

These are awesome questions, and I respect all reptiles.

• There is no provision for partitioning in AirPort Utility 5.3. Conceivably, Apple could fold in more Disk Utility features in the future, and it would be a simple software update (but require wiping the drive, unless they're using something more flexible in their hidden partitioning).
• Attached USB drives can be partitioned, but only when attached to a Mac (for HFS+ or FAT32) or other system (for FAT32). It's just the same as with the AirPort Extreme with 802.11n.
• Yes, it's NAS -- in fact, AFP is used for Time Capsule backups with Time Machine just as if it were a networked shared volume on another Leopard system.
• Remotely accessing: How? By AFP using an IP address on the router? I'll try that.