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"Time Capsule for $25" A naked Raspberry Pi costs $35. Add an enclosure and shipping, it will be closer to $60. That doesn't include storage. Time Capsule con

"Time Capsule for $25" A naked Raspberry Pi costs $35. Add an enclosure and shipping, it will be closer to $60. That doesn't include storage. Time Capsule contains a 2TB hard disk. The same WD drive retails for $170 at Amazon. That brings our total to $230, for a product that doesn't work nearly as well as a real Time Capsule and for which you won't receive service and support from Apple. Or you can just buy a Time Capsule for $299: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD032/time-capsule-2tb http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD032/time-capsule-2tb

CrazedGeek 14y ago
Where are you getting $170 for a 2TB disk? Amazon has 3TB disks for $130.
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  When Hardmac did a teardown of the latest Time Capsule, they found it has a Western Digital WD20EARS hard disk. [0] That drive is listed as $169 MSRP at Amazon. [1] [0] http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/25/updated-time-capsule-opened-server-grade-hard-drive-nowhere-to/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/25/updated-time-capsule-open... [1] http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Desktop-WD20EARS/dp/B002ZCXK0I http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Desktop-WD20EAR...
  - jws 14y ago
    You might be seeing a premium price for discontinued hardware. The current lineup of WD Green 2TB drives are ~$100. There is no way for me to know if these are lower quality than the previous model or not.
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      Good point. I'm curious as to which HDD models Apple uses nowadays for their Time Capsule, that would allow for a better comparison. I couldn't find that information anywhere. By the way, my first generation Time Capsule has a 500GB Seagate Barracuda ES, which used to retail for over $300. http://goo.gl/Yazvn http://goo.gl/Yazvn
      - jujjine 14y ago
        At the introduction of the Time Capsule, it retailed for less than 100€.
  - CrazedGeek 14y ago
    That's how much the hard drive is now. That teardown was done before the Thailand floods, which I'd imagine are related to the current Amazon price. [1] The WD20EARS was only $100 well before that Time Capsule was released. [2] [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-thai-floods-drives-idUSTRE79R66220111028 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-thai-floods-dri... [2] From my Amazon order history: http://i.imgur.com/lYYlR.png http://i.imgur.com/lYYlR.png
- bradleyland 14y ago
  This whole conversation is kind of strange, but let's play along anyway. If you deal shop, you can get the price down:. [1] $40 Raspberry Pi - Model B, because that's all that's available (includes $5 shipping) [2] $10 Enclosure (some DIY required) [3] $116 WD 2TB Hard Drive (selected WD because that is [apparently] what Apple uses) Total: $166 That's an aggressive HD price, and remember, you need an external HDD. A lot of the pricing being thrown around here is for internal drives. Regular price on the drive I spec'd was $180. There are always deals to be had though. The price may be more depending on your timing. The case I spec'd is extremely DIY as well. If you went with something nicer, you'd spend more as well. It's kind of hard to justify a crappy case when you're comparing to a Time Capsule. So if you add in $20 for a HDD price not-so-on-sale and $10 for a nicer case (Adafruit is decent), you're looking at $196, which is edging up toward the cost of a Time Capsule, and that's not factoring in time for configuration. The whole point here is that you don't do projects like this to save money. You do projects like this for the fun and learning experience, or to have greater control/flexibility. If you go in to this project to save money, then I think you're barking up the wrong tree. 1 - Pick a vendor any vendor (pricing is standard) 2 - http://blujay.com/item/Black-Electronic-Project-Box-100-x-60-x-25mm-suit-Raspberry-Pi-ABS-Multi-Purpose-4020000-4189163 http://blujay.com/item/Black-Electronic-Project-Box-100-x-60... 3 - http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-3-5-Inch-Internal-Desktop/dp/B00471EYUU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1354305295&sr=8-3&keywords=western+digital+green+2tb http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-3-5-Inch-Internal-Desk...
  - CrazedGeek 14y ago
    > The whole point here is that you don't do projects like this to save money. You do projects like this for the fun and learning experience, or to have greater control/flexibility. If you go in to this project to save money, then I think you're barking up the wrong tree. That was where I was leading it, yeah. Attacking it on a price basis just seems weird to me.
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      "Attacking it on a price basis just seems weird to me." The title of the article is "Time Capsule for $25", so apparently the author thought the price is the main selling point. The actual price is way higher, he set himself up for someone to point that out.
DigitalJack 14y ago
I think your HD price is off, and time capsules have not had a history of reliability. However, I've also run a linux/netatalk box, back in the snow-leopard days. It did "work", but things would get screwed up for me if I ever closed my laptop whenever a backup was in progress. I ended up using an airport extreme for time-machine backups. It works well. I have it connected to a Sabio raid box[1]. I don't think apple advertises that the extreme works for time-machine, but it's basically plug-n-play type setup. No hackery required. Just an external disk with USB connectivity. [1] http://www.sabioproducts.com/products?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=70 http://www.sabioproducts.com/products?page=shop.product_deta...
rentzsch 14y ago
I agree with your analysis, and that doesn't even include the value of your time. However Time Capsules run hot and have a nasty habit of burning out every two years or so. I presume the Pi + external drive would run cooler and have a much longer life.
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  Yup. I bought the original 500GB Time Capsule, the power supply died after 18 months. Apple replaced my Time Capsule for free. This one has been working fine since November of 2009, but I'll never trust it to be my only way of performing backups. Time Capsule Memorial Register: http://timecapsuledead.org/ http://timecapsuledead.org/ Time Capsule is a very convenient way to use Time Machine, and it works great until it dies. Judging from the other comments, that's the difference with the Raspberry solution, which apparently isn't very reliable and doesn't allow for HFS+ with Journaling.
  - solarexplorer 14y ago
    As already stated, the problem is that netatalk has trouble keeping the AFP protocol up to date. On the Linux box it doesn't make sense to use HFS since Ext3 is much more stable and also supports journaling...
gambiting 14y ago
The title of the article is wrong,but otherwise it's very useful - I had a spare 500GB drive laying around and a Pi for which I had no major use and now I use it as a Time Capsule on a daily basis without spending a penny on top of what I already spent on hardware which I wasn't using anyway.

CrazedGeek 14y ago

Where are you getting $170 for a 2TB disk? Amazon has 3TB disks for $130.

Samuel_Michon 14y ago
When Hardmac did a teardown of the latest Time Capsule, they found it has a Western Digital WD20EARS hard disk. [0] That drive is listed as $169 MSRP at Amazon. [1] [0] http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/25/updated-time-capsule-opened-server-grade-hard-drive-nowhere-to/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/25/updated-time-capsule-open... [1] http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Desktop-WD20EARS/dp/B002ZCXK0I http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Desktop-WD20EAR...
- jws 14y ago
  You might be seeing a premium price for discontinued hardware. The current lineup of WD Green 2TB drives are ~$100. There is no way for me to know if these are lower quality than the previous model or not.
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    Good point. I'm curious as to which HDD models Apple uses nowadays for their Time Capsule, that would allow for a better comparison. I couldn't find that information anywhere. By the way, my first generation Time Capsule has a 500GB Seagate Barracuda ES, which used to retail for over $300. http://goo.gl/Yazvn http://goo.gl/Yazvn
    - jujjine 14y ago
      At the introduction of the Time Capsule, it retailed for less than 100€.
- CrazedGeek 14y ago
  That's how much the hard drive is now. That teardown was done before the Thailand floods, which I'd imagine are related to the current Amazon price. [1] The WD20EARS was only $100 well before that Time Capsule was released. [2] [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-thai-floods-drives-idUSTRE79R66220111028 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-thai-floods-dri... [2] From my Amazon order history: http://i.imgur.com/lYYlR.png http://i.imgur.com/lYYlR.png
bradleyland 14y ago
This whole conversation is kind of strange, but let's play along anyway. If you deal shop, you can get the price down:. [1] $40 Raspberry Pi - Model B, because that's all that's available (includes $5 shipping) [2] $10 Enclosure (some DIY required) [3] $116 WD 2TB Hard Drive (selected WD because that is [apparently] what Apple uses) Total: $166 That's an aggressive HD price, and remember, you need an external HDD. A lot of the pricing being thrown around here is for internal drives. Regular price on the drive I spec'd was $180. There are always deals to be had though. The price may be more depending on your timing. The case I spec'd is extremely DIY as well. If you went with something nicer, you'd spend more as well. It's kind of hard to justify a crappy case when you're comparing to a Time Capsule. So if you add in $20 for a HDD price not-so-on-sale and $10 for a nicer case (Adafruit is decent), you're looking at $196, which is edging up toward the cost of a Time Capsule, and that's not factoring in time for configuration. The whole point here is that you don't do projects like this to save money. You do projects like this for the fun and learning experience, or to have greater control/flexibility. If you go in to this project to save money, then I think you're barking up the wrong tree. 1 - Pick a vendor any vendor (pricing is standard) 2 - http://blujay.com/item/Black-Electronic-Project-Box-100-x-60-x-25mm-suit-Raspberry-Pi-ABS-Multi-Purpose-4020000-4189163 http://blujay.com/item/Black-Electronic-Project-Box-100-x-60... 3 - http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-3-5-Inch-Internal-Desktop/dp/B00471EYUU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1354305295&sr=8-3&keywords=western+digital+green+2tb http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-3-5-Inch-Internal-Desk...
- CrazedGeek 14y ago
  > The whole point here is that you don't do projects like this to save money. You do projects like this for the fun and learning experience, or to have greater control/flexibility. If you go in to this project to save money, then I think you're barking up the wrong tree. That was where I was leading it, yeah. Attacking it on a price basis just seems weird to me.
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    "Attacking it on a price basis just seems weird to me." The title of the article is "Time Capsule for $25", so apparently the author thought the price is the main selling point. The actual price is way higher, he set himself up for someone to point that out.

DigitalJack 14y ago

I think your HD price is off, and time capsules have not had a history of reliability. However, I've also run a linux/netatalk box, back in the snow-leopard days. It did "work", but things would get screwed up for me if I ever closed my laptop whenever a backup was in progress. I ended up using an airport extreme for time-machine backups. It works well. I have it connected to a Sabio raid box[1]. I don't think apple advertises that the extreme works for time-machine, but it's basically plug-n-play type setup. No hackery required. Just an external disk with USB connectivity. [1] http://www.sabioproducts.com/products?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=70 http://www.sabioproducts.com/products?page=shop.product_deta...

rentzsch 14y ago

I agree with your analysis, and that doesn't even include the value of your time. However Time Capsules run hot and have a nasty habit of burning out every two years or so. I presume the Pi + external drive would run cooler and have a much longer life.

Samuel_Michon 14y ago
Yup. I bought the original 500GB Time Capsule, the power supply died after 18 months. Apple replaced my Time Capsule for free. This one has been working fine since November of 2009, but I'll never trust it to be my only way of performing backups. Time Capsule Memorial Register: http://timecapsuledead.org/ http://timecapsuledead.org/ Time Capsule is a very convenient way to use Time Machine, and it works great until it dies. Judging from the other comments, that's the difference with the Raspberry solution, which apparently isn't very reliable and doesn't allow for HFS+ with Journaling.
- solarexplorer 14y ago
  As already stated, the problem is that netatalk has trouble keeping the AFP protocol up to date. On the Linux box it doesn't make sense to use HFS since Ext3 is much more stable and also supports journaling...

gambiting 14y ago

The title of the article is wrong,but otherwise it's very useful - I had a spare 500GB drive laying around and a Pi for which I had no major use and now I use it as a Time Capsule on a daily basis without spending a penny on top of what I already spent on hardware which I wasn't using anyway.