I've been a user of the first and last generations of Time Capsules, together with Time Machine, over the last decade. During that time my bacon has been saved more than once by the disaster recovery functionality they provide.
Fate would have it that shortly after the announcement that Apple had discontinued development of the Time Capsule, and re-assigned its development team to other duties, my 3TB Time Capsule decided it was time to give up the ghost! I experienced repeated Time Machine reports of backup verification failure, deletion of existing backups and re-creation of new files, followed by Time Capsule disk errors that couldn't be repaired by Disk Utility's First Aid function.
Being unwilling to purchase a new, but now obsolete, Time Capsule I decided to research alternatives and have now successfully implemented the following backup strategy:
- I decided not to adopt a Cloud-based solution at this time, which is possibly the Time Capsule alternative that Apple is hoping its customers will adopt. While I understand the full security provided by off-site backups, the speed of data transfers of hundreds of gigabytes of data to and from a Cloud, even with a relatively fast Internet connection, are a deterrent for now.
- I decided upon a NAS solution and purchased a 6TB Synology DS218j which provided the added protection of RAID 1 mirrored disks (something the Time Capsule did not do for approximately the same price).
- Initial attempts to run Time Machine to the Synology NAS resulted in numerous backup verification failures so I gave up on this option. I felt I was between a rock and a hard place on technical support because I was using Time Machine to backup to a non-Apple device, which Apple wouldn't support and Synology referring user issues back to Apple!
- So, a Time Machine alternative had to be found. My solution is Acronis True Image 2018 as a standard non-cloud one-off purchase rather than the Cloud-based subscription product.
My iMac and MacBook Pro are now backing up incrementally to my NAS and I believe that I have successfully migrated away from Apple's Time Machine/Time Capsule solution to an alternative that meets my needs, although I recognise this will not be suitable for everyone.
I offer my own experiences of life after Time Capsule as food for thought or comment for others who may find themselves in a similar dilemma to me.