The AirPort Time Capsule also known as 'Time Capsule' is a wireless network device sold by Apple Inc.. It features a network-attached storage (NAS) and a residential gateway router. It is described as a "Backup Appliance", designed to work in tandem with the Time Machine backup software utility introduced in Mac OS X 10.5.
Introduced on January 15, 2008 and released on February 29, 2008, the device includes a full AirPort Extreme Base Station which features 802.11n wireless, one Ethernet WAN port, three Ethernet LAN ports, and one USB port. The USB port can be used for external peripheral devices to be shared over the network, such as external hard drives or printers. The NAS functionality utilizes a built-in "server grade" hard drive.
Apple Time Capsule SKU are constructed with the 5 first characters identifying the "product version" and the remaining ones indicating the localization, such as country-specific power supply.
As of the fourth generation, all generations have had two models; one with a smaller capacity hard drive, and one with a larger capacity hard drive, with them always being priced at US$299 and US$499 respectively.
As of the fifth generation, Apple has maintained the US$299 price of the smaller 2 TB version while the larger 3 TB version has been lowered to US$399.
One of the key features of Time Capsule, is the ability to back up a system and files wirelessly and automatically, eliminating the need to attach an external backup drive. This feature requires OS X 10.5.2 Leopard or greater on the client computers. The backup software is Apple's Time Machine, which, by default, makes hourly images of the files that are being changed, and condenses backup images as they become older, to save space. Even when using an 802.11n wireless or Gigabit Ethernet connection, the initial backup of any Mac to the drive requires significant time; Apple suggests that the first backup will take "overnight or longer".[12] Subsequent backups are incremental, thus will typically be quicker, as they only include changed files. Clients using Mac OS X Snow Leopard, can perform the initial backup twice as fast as Leopard clients. The backup disk can also be used by Windows-based computers, and the files on it can be managed by another OS such as Windows.
The hard drive typically found in a Time Capsule is the Hitachi Deskstar, which is sold by Hitachi as a consumer-grade product—the Hitachi Ultrastar is the enterprise version. Apple labeled the drive as a server-grade drive in promotional material for Time Capsule, and also used this type of drive in its discontinued Xserve servers. Apple states that the Hitachi Deskstar meets or exceeds the 1 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF) recommendation for server-grade hard drives.
The 2013 models feature the same I/O ports on the back as previous generations, and come in the same capacities as the 4th generation of 2 TB & 3 TB, but have introduced the newest Wi-Fi standard 802.11ac. The new AirPort Extreme released at the same time is exactly the same in dimensions and I/O ports, just without the internal harddrive of the Airport Time Capsule.
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1. APPLE.COM
2. WIKIPEDIA
