Apple's Time Capsules croak after 18 months?

Ideally, your backup storage solution, whatever it is, should be the most reliable part of your system. After all, who wants to back up a backup? I’ve never had a drive fail on me, but that hasn’t stopped me from having multiple copies of my music, photos, and miscellaneous junk spread over several external drives.

Apple saves you the trouble with Time Machine and Time Capsule, but what if — I know it’s ridiculous but bear with me — what if the Time Capsule hardware wasn’t the most rock-solid, and they started to fail after a year and a half? I only ask because, you know, that’s what’s happening.

It seems there is a growing contingent of users who are having their Time Capsules just shut right down on them, never to start again. Whether it’s the drive or some other component, the fact is that lots of people are reporting the same problem occurring in around the same time frame.

Proud owner of a Time Capsule? You can roll the dice, or you can buy another hard drive and double up. Look, here’s 1TB for just over $100. Is peace of mind worth that kind of money? I’d say so. Plus, then you’ve got more room for all kinds of legitimate media purchases.