How to Backup Your iPhone with TimeCapsule. Connecting to the Time Capsule disk from mobile devices Which disk is better to choose

I must say right away that Planet, in my opinion, is the easiest provider to set up, but it has 1 pitfall that can unbalance a little if you don’t know about it (details below)! I did the setup with a friend, where I was able to take a bunch of screenshots, and get a great photo from ! So, let's get started (there are a lot of pictures under the cut)!

AirPort Time Capsule

The first thing to do is turn on the access point to the network, connect the cable from the provider to the WAN connector and run the AirPort Utility (Programs / Utilities). If the access point has already been configured with a previous provider, then it is better to reset it by pressing and holding the special button on the back of the AirPort for 10 seconds and configure it from scratch. Please note that the data on the disk (in the case of the Time Capsule) is not deleted, only the network and WiFi settings are reset!

After all the conditions from the previous paragraph have been met, we proceed to the configuration. First we must select our access point from the list of available networks.

Selecting a new access point

Right after that, AirPort Utility may open, with the Capsule preconfigured. If this does not happen, feel free to run it!

Turning on AirPort for the first time

AirPort auto setup

The access point will be prepared for configuration, and if you have already configured other AirPorts from your computer, the system will automatically go through them to check the settings.

After going through all the previous options, the Utility will give you the fields to enter the basic settings.

Entering the network name and password

I’ll make a reservation right away that I chose the Other options item, as this will give a little more customization options. As a result, we see such a window:

Create a new network

In this case, it was necessary to set up the Time Capsule as new, and I chose the first option. I think you will need the same. Feel free to click Next!

Entering a network name and password

Here we prescribe the main parameters of the future network. The network name is how the network will be seen by your devices, the base station name is the identifier of the access point itself (it will later be displayed in the Finder sidebar when accessing the disk), the password is the password you will use to connect to AirPort. The first and second names can be made the same. By the way, to access the network and its settings, you can make different passwords. You will need this if you want to protect your network from unauthorized reconfiguration, for example, in an office or public place (cafe). After filling in all the fields, we boldly move forward.

Building a guest network

In the new window, you can activate the guest network. You need it, for example, if you want to distribute the Internet and be on the same network with someone, but you don’t want someone to have access to the built-in disk (or to the one connected to USB in the case of Airport Time Capsule and Extreme ). If you skip this step and do not set up a guest network, you can enable it later from the advanced settings of AirPort Utility. Go ahead.

Saving parameters beforehand

At this stage, the settings are applied and the access point is rebooted. After everything that we did with the access point, it should take it all into itself.

After the reboot, we see a globe icon representing the Internet and our AirPort Time Capsule. If you click on it, we will see a small menu where you can enter the fine-tuning of the access point. To do this, click on Edit.

Fine-tuning the Time Capsule

The first tab allows you to configure the Base Station.

Base station tab

Here we see fields that are already familiar to us, in which we will not change anything unless there is an urgent need. You can also set up using your Apple ID, if you click on the plus and enter your ID and password. Let's go to the Internet tab.

Entering details

In this window, you will need to enter your Internet details that the provider provided you. I remembered several providers that AirPort works with - Planet, ... There may be others, but I won’t say that right off the bat. Why these providers? Yes, simply because they do not use tunneling (VPN), which is not supported by apple access points. Kabinet, Dom.ru, MTS, Beeline, Akado use VPN, and to set up AirPort Express / Extreme, you first need a VPN router that will connect to the provider, and only then distribute "clean" (via DHCP or static) apple Internet access point.

As for the pitfall of the Planet (Convex and Ruskom) - they have a MAC address binding, and if you change the router, you will need to call the technical support service and ask to rebind the point (passport data may be needed). After a successful conversation with the TP, you will be able to access the Internet.

By the way, if the provider automatically issues the details, then leave Connect via, in the DHCP state. If some other parameters are used (static IP or PPPoE), then select it:

Selecting the type of connection

After selecting the type of connection and entering the details, you can go to the next tab.

Setting up a wireless network

At this stage, you can slightly change the operation of the access point itself, if it is an extension of an existing wireless network. In this case, select Extended in the Network Mode menu. wireless network. A similar case may occur in a large house or office, where the range of one point may not be enough.

Selecting the type of wireless network operation

Also here you can change the way the network is encrypted WPA, WPA 2 and others. By the way, if you didn’t create a guest network at the AirPort initial setup stage, then this can be done right here.

If you click on the Options... button, then another interesting field will open in front of us:

5 GHz network activation

In this window, you can activate the 5GHz network, as well as select a channel for the wireless network. Now we will not dwell on this in detail, you can try to experiment on your own and decide which mode of operation suits you best. If there are no questions here, click Save and go to the next tab - Network:

Fine-tuning network settings

I would be happy to tell you in detail about all the points, only here you will not need them in most cases. And if you need it, you can always 🙂

Let's go to the last tab - Disk.

Setting up the built-in disk

In the case of setting up Tima Capsule, you will see the built-in disk, its volume and free space on it. Here you can clean the disk, or transfer all data to an external disk by clicking on the Backup Disk button. We will not touch other settings - everything works as it should!

If you have gone through all the steps and selected the settings that suit you, then feel free to click on Update and agree to the update. After restarting AirPort, you can reconnect to it and enjoy the Internet!

Let me remind you again that AirPort Express, Extreme and Time Capsule do not support VPN! I strongly recommend that you take this fact into account when choosing an access point to your home, or when choosing a provider! If you still find yourself in a situation with a VPN, do not despair - a simple "gasket" between the provider and your AirPort can be TP-Link TL-WR841, for example. Personally, for me, a similar router takes out all communication in the apartment 🙂

Remote access to Time Capsule and back up iPhone to Time Capsule

Dear readers, as an afterword, I would like to clarify something else. I often receive emails like the following:

the ability to remotely access the Time Capsule from the Internet (without using a permanent ip-address);
interaction with Time Capsule and iPhone/iPad disk. How to back up your phone to a capsule.

AirPort Express/Extreme/Time Capsule - home, amateur devices! They are very easy to set up, as you saw above, but their functionality is very poor! They cannot be loaded with Padavan firmware, dd-wrt or something similar, thereby expanding the potential of AirPort ... These access points are more suitable for a home or small office, but not for geeks who want to get the most out of the device ...

Remote access to the Time Capsule is only possible through your Apple ID. In the first tab "Base Station" you can enter your Apple ID below and then your capsule will be seen on your Mac from anywhere in the world, as long as there is an Internet connection. No, this will not work with Windows. And it doesn't matter what kind of network connection you have: DHCP, static or PPPoE.

How to watch Time Capsule movies from iPhone/iPad? Nothing, no crutches... This hotspot only works well with computers. Yes, you can install a program like or on your iPhone/iPad and connect a disk from Capsule to it. To be honest: I tried these solutions and everything works extremely well. user friendly. In short, one place...

How to back up iPhone/iPad to Time Capsule? Almost nothing. That is, directly, so that at the click of a button a copy was created, or even automatically - no way! There is a workaround, but there is no way without a computer: the most ordinary backup copy is created in iTunes, and then the ~/Library/Application Support/Mobile sync/Backups folder is either manually transferred to the capsule or we wait for the next update of the copy via Time Machine, so that the local copy from iTunes got on the capsule. And then we go to the iTunes settings and delete the backup so that it does not take up space on the built-in disk ... I say that this was done through one place ...

By the way, at the expense of the photo, which I wrote about at the very beginning, here it is:

Apple Profi

Many thanks to Nikita Polosov for such a cool shot and for providing access to my AirPort Time Capsule!

Time Machine is macOS' built-in backup feature. It automatically backs up the contents of your computer to an external drive or network drive.

Time Machine is a file backup feature found in every modern version of macOS. By enabling Time Machine, you will protect yourself from accidental deletion or loss of files. Any files and folders, as well as their intermediate versions, can be restored.

Now I will tell you how to set up and use Time Machine.

How Time Machine Works

Time Machine backs up the user's folders: documents, downloads, applications, etc.

Backups are created automatically, every hour. All you have to do is specify the disk to which the system will backup.

After setting up Time Machine, you will always have access to:

hourly backups for the last 24 hours;
daily backups for the last month;
weekly backups for all other months of work.

Time Machine does not back up macOS itself. Therefore, if your system has completely crashed, you will first have to put macOS on a clean one from Recovery Mode, and then restore information from Time Machine using the Migration Assistant.

How to set up Time Machine

To turn on Time Machine - connect an external hard drive to your Mac and select it in:

 ▸ System Preferences… ▸ Time Machine ▸ Select Disk…

The first step is to select an external drive for Time Machine

I previously formatted the drive using Disk Utility and named it Time Machine

The system will ask you to format the disk specifically for Time Machine, so make sure that there is no important information on it.

Be sure to enable backup encryption so that no one else can access your files.

Which disc is better to choose

As for connecting the disk, there are two options: wired and wireless. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Wired Disk

The easiest and most affordable option. Mechanical HDD for 1 TB will cost $60-70. It is not as fast as an SSD, but the speed of a modern disk is more than enough to transfer several hundred megabytes to it once an hour.

🐢Western Digital My Passport USB-A 1TB: Rozetka/Citilink

The Samsung T5 SSD is fast, small, light and can be connected directly via USB-C

The downside is that a wired connection is not convenient and not very reliable. If you can connect a disk to an iMac and forget about it, then you will have to constantly connect / disconnect the disk to a laptop. It's just too lazy to do it.

Over time, USB connectors, and especially USB-C, begin to become loose and the drive may “fall off” at the time of backup, which leads to file corruption in the case of mechanical drives.

Wireless Drive

With such a disk, a backup occurs when the computer is in the range of home WiFi. With a wireless connection, there is no accidental disconnection of the drive due to a dropped power wire, as is the case with wired drives, which means there is less chance of damaging some files when copying.

WD My Cloud connects to WiFi hotspot and MacBook sees it as a network drive

As a rule, the drive is connected to your access point via an Ethernet cable, after which it appears in macOS as a separate network drive.

A network drive can be used to back up several home computers at once.

Time Capsule

Surely you have heard about the Time Capsule from Apple itself. This is an access point with a built-in network drive of several terabytes, which is tailored to work with Time Machine. Alas, Apple in 2018 curtailed the division responsible for the Time Capsule and AirPort access points, so it's better to take a closer look at the two previous options.

What disk size to choose

It is better to take a disk that is two or more times larger than your main one. For example, if your MacBook Pro has a 512 GB SSD, then it is better to allocate a 1 TB disk for Time Machine backup. In this case, you will have a history of file changes for at least the last couple of months, not weeks.

What happens when the disk is full

Time Machine will automatically start deleting the oldest weekly backups that are older than one month. So the work of Time Machine will never stop.

How to limit the size of a Time Machine copy

Time Machine "captures" the entire disk that you specify for its needs. If your external drive is 4 terabytes, then TM will keep older backups until the drive is full.

The only way to “pacify” Time Machine is to create a separate smaller logical partition for it and make backups for it. You can do this through disk utility macOS.

If you have a large disk, it makes sense to create a separate smaller partition for Time Machine. To do this, the disk will have to be formatted and partitioned.

How to exclude folders from backup

Sometimes it is useful to exclude certain directories from backups, for example the folder Downloads or Movies, in which files appear and delete frequently.

To exclude a folder, go to  ▸ System Preferences ▸ Time Machine ▸ Preferences and add it to the list by pressing the + key.

Add folders you don't want to back up. For example Downloads and Videos

How to recover files from Tim Machine

If you need to restore a file, launch Time Machine from the folder Applications:

Finder ▸ Applications ▸ Time Machine

You will see a Finder window in the form of a carousel. Let's say you need to recover a file from your desktop that was there last week. Go to your desktop in a Finder window and then use the on-screen arrows ⬆︎ ⬇︎ to move between backups until you see this file.

Click on the file and click Restore.

Restoring files via Time Machine

If Time Machine was not enabled and you need to restore the files, then .

How to disable internal backups

If you set up Time Machine, but stopped connecting the backup drive, then after a couple of weeks you will notice a lack of free space on the main drive.

This is because while the external drive is not connected, Time Machine creates temporary backups on the system drive.

To clean up local backups, simply mount the drive that you set up to work with Time Machine. The system itself will transfer all local backups to this drive.

If you are unable to connect the drive to your computer, then delete the /.MobileBackups folder, which stores local backups.

If you want to completely disable local backups, then run in Terminal command:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

Enable local backups back:

sudo tmutil enablelocal

If you disable local backups, then Time Machine will only work when an external drive is connected to the computer.

🌿 Remember

To turn on Time Machine, you will definitely need an external drive. With a system disk or "cloud" this function does not work;
I recommend buying an SSD. These discs are more reliable and faster than mechanical discs. And they are not afraid of falling;
Be sure to enable disk encryption so that no one can access your files in the backup;
Backup occurs automatically and every hour if the computer is connected to a power source;
It is desirable that the disk size be twice as large as the disk of your MacBook or iMac. This way you can have backup copies of files from the last few months.

Apple sometimes makes very strange devices that allow users to use them not only for their intended purpose, but also to their heart's content. Especially when there is such a powerful community in which there are many inventors. For example, the Apple TV set-top box, it would seem, well, what can be done with it, after all, it can do a lot anyway! But no, there were enthusiasts who turned the device into a kind of video recorder that supports many common video formats. There were kind people who revealed to the world the secret of replacing a hard drive without much harm. And, of course, this is not all that enthusiasts have done with this accessory. Today I want to tell you about another similar device called the Apple Time Capsule. The name is closely related to one of the functions of Mac OS, Time Machine, - backing up system data for later recovery both on your own and on a new laptop computer.

Appearance

The device comes in a small box, opening it, we find the actual Time Capsule, power cable, disks with software for Mac OS and Windows. Since this accessory has not yet been officially delivered to Russia due to problems with the certification of the IEEE 802.11n standard (as far as I understand, precisely because of this), the power cable needs an adapter for our sockets. You can connect the Time Capsule without fear of burning it, it supports voltage from 140 to 240 V. The device itself is a relatively small box, branded milky white plastic, a light indicator on the front panel and not a single button. Unless there is a hole with a hidden Reset button, it is located at the back, and at first I thought with a grin that I would not have to use it. As it turned out, he was mistaken. On the back are ports in bulk:

One Gigabit Ethernet WAN port for connecting an ADSL or cable modem
Three Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports for connecting computers or network devices
USB port for connecting a USB printer or external USB hard drive

The dimensions of the device are 197x197x36.6 mm, the Time Capsule weighs from one and a half kilograms, depending on the modification. At the moment, devices with a hard disk capacity of one or two terabytes are relevant, just the last option was tested. In an article about the company's recent announcement, I pointed out one fact that was not particularly pleasant for me personally - the "capsules" were also updated and became more productive. It so happened that I bought the copy I took for the test a few hours later, because it was necessary to update it “on time” in such a way. On the other hand, it's still a good thing.

Two words about the hard drive: as written on the Apple website, a server-level Serial ATA, 7200 rpm hard drive is used.

Setting

Perhaps I'll talk about how I set up the Time Capsule for my own use, below we'll talk a little about other features. So, the reason for changing the access point for me personally is simple. I've been using the Zyxel P-330 for two years now. Or rather, not even used, but rather fought. There are a lot of devices with Wi-Fi in the family, and when I sat down to drive the PS3 in the evening, the set-top box just gave a connection error. Of course, if the network still has a wife's laptop, my laptop, iPhone, plus some device that has remained forgotten. But connected. What did Zyxel do? Required a reboot. And so every day. I believe that with one or two devices this thing can work just fine. But as soon as something else appeared, the 330th, waving his pen, politely sent this very “something” to distant lands. Thoughts about replacing arose for a very long time, but did not reach his hands. And when I took the Time Capsule for a test, I didn’t think about buying it - it’s a painfully expensive router, whatever you say and whatever arguments you come up with. Even despite the hard drive is very large, even despite all the other "goodies". I thought like this: I'll test it, if I like it, I'll look at AirPort Express. Well, or on a regular AirPort.

It all turned out wrong. First, I inserted an Ethernet cable into the device, into the WAN port. I have been using Akado for a year now, it is a pity that digital television will not reach my house. But the internet is fine. I had all the settings written down, so all that remained was to install a small program from the disk from the kit, it's called "AirPort Utility". It is interesting that the installation language and the program did not even have to be chosen, everything was in Russian at once. Yes, I used MBP 17 with Snow Leopard installed for setup. So, all the pieces of the puzzle are put together, the Time Capsule indicator blinks yellow, the program detects this device and offers to configure it. Okay, let's do it! The process is not difficult, if you have ever configured an access point through the web interface, then there will be no problems here either. But not in my case. The problem appeared after the completion of the settings. All this time, the indicator on the device blinked yellow regularly, demonstrating the recording of the settings. But at the final stage, when the Time Capsule was supposed to reboot, nothing happened. Moreover, it was not detected by any computer. I had to take the pen and use the reset button. Hm, didn't help. After reading the instructions, I found out an interesting fact: if simply pressing and holding the button for a few seconds does not help, you need to unplug the cable from the outlet, press and hold the Reset button, and reconnect the Time Capsule to the network. This method helped. I entered the settings again, very carefully, and again the same problem. At the final stage, the device did not reboot.

I will not torment you, I spent an hour to find out the reason, and it turned out to be banal. I set up the Time Capsule using the so-called "quick" setting, when I had to select the setting manually. When I entered all the data in this window, the Time Capsule rebooted properly and began distributing the Internet to the entire neighborhood.

In no way do I want to blame the creators of the Time Capsule software, since for some reason the problem that arose was typical only for me, no one on the forums encountered this.

What can be done in the settings? You can set up AirPort, everything is traditional here. In the "Wireless" section, you can select the radio mode, this is 802.11 a / n - 802.11 b / g or 802.11 a - 802.11 b / g. The "Guest network" section is designed to create a kind of special world for visitors to your home or office - they will be able to connect to the network, but they will not "see" the private network and the Time Capsule. And, accordingly, they will not receive access to its disk. The Internet settings are standard, and here it was necessary to drive in the provider's data. Some official information:

Time Capsule Certified for Wi-Fi Draft 802.11n Specification Version 2.0 (Firmware Version 7.3.1)
Interoperability with Macs, Windows PCs, and other Wi-Fi devices certified for Wi-Fi 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and draft 802.11n specification version 2.0.
NAT, DHCP, PPPoE, VPN passthrough (IPSec, PPTP and L2TP), DNS Proxy, SNMP, IPv6 (6-to-4 tunnels and manual tunnel configuration).

There are also separate sections for setting up printers, disks (connected via USB), in the Advanced section you can view statistics, set up port forwarding, specify your MobileMe data for the "Access my Mac" function to work, set up IPv6.

So, after all the settings in the Finder, another device appears, the Time Capsule. On the expanses of the hard drive, you can save a lot of necessary and useful files and access them at any time. For example, the first thing I decided to do was to save a mighty bunch of different videos in the Time Capsule's memory - watched TV shows, good films that had already been watched a hundred times, concert recordings, and so on. Simply put, something that is a pity to delete, but you don’t want it to take up space on the laptop’s disk. To begin with, I chose four films, standard "avis", the average size is 1.5 GB. A VIDEO folder was created in the Time Capsule and the files were fed to the "capsule". Well, the speed is not bad, four videos in twenty minutes is not bad.

Separately, it must be said about the Internet, about stable and smooth work with all home devices. For me, this is a kind of psychological “breakthrough” when you have breakfast in the morning, turn on Wi-Fi on your phone and don’t know whether it will connect to the network or not ... Sometimes it makes me very angry. With the Time Capsule, this is not the case, she has been at home for a couple of weeks, during which time there has not been a single reboot or connection problems. The range of work suits me personally, in a three-room apartment the signal is sure everywhere, both on the loggia and in the kitchen.

time machine

In theory, the main purpose of the Time Capsule is to use the hard drive for backup. Everything is simple here: select Time Machine, enable this function, specify the hard drive - respectively, Time Capsule. After that, backup occurs automatically. This process does not greatly affect the speed of networking, but it can take a lot of time. And, frankly, it’s a pity for the space on such a good network drive, I think if I “move” to another laptop, I will connect an external hard drive via USB and get a copy much faster. True, in my case, when using the Time Capsule, the process is very slow.

What else?

Well, now let's talk about what you can do with the Time Capsule. The scheme of working with the device that I have described is very simple, in fact, for me it is just an access point and a network drive for storing and playing various files. Yes, yes, right from the Time Capsule it’s great to watch videos, without problems, without delays or “brakes”. But if you have other views on the Time Capsule and want more, then you need to go here, to the Ru_mac community. We are looking for a tag and find a real treasure trove of knowledge. For example:

Hello! There was such a problem: There is a netbook with Windows 7. The Internet through the Capsule works with a bang, but the capsular screw refuses to see ... There is also no capsule in the network environment, although the Workgroup group is everywhere. If you connect a network drive in Windows, it thinks for a very long time, then it falls off like check the network address ... It works fine with a Macbook with a capsule screw, and Windows 7 sees the shared folders of the Macbook normally, but the capsule simply refuses to see ... Maybe someone came across with such a problem? or maybe if there are any suggestions what can be done, except how to throw out the netbook with Windows 7 "

The solution turned out to be simple: “The whole trick is that in Windows 7, by default in the sharing settings, you should only work with devices that support 128-bit encryption ... if you disable this garbage, then everything works with a bang.”

I will not occupy your attention, if you are interested in Time Capsule and non-standard scenarios for its use, then follow the link in the Ru_mac community. There are topics about connecting additional devices to the Time Capsule, and about using it with different providers, and about backup features, and a lot of general information. Including comparison with competitors, advice on buying, repairing.

conclusions

I can do without any “buts”, this device is in order, if you take it in the USA, you need to cook about five hundred dollars. In Russia, this figure turns into twenty thousand rubles or even more. The Time Capsule, like some other Apple gadgets, is not covered by a worldwide warranty, in case of a breakdown you will have to look for an enthusiast who is ready to help with the repair. So it is expensive and for Russia is not yet very relevant. Moreover, for less money you can buy another router.

For myself, I made the choice for a simple reason: for a MacOS user, working with a network drive is a real pleasure, plus I like the Time Capsule as an access point. It works almost silently, however, it heats up during data transfer. Therefore, the "capsule" took root and found its place at home, I do not want to scour now in search of a substitute. Perhaps later I will connect a printer and one of the external hard drives to it, we'll see. In any case, Apple turned out to be a rather curious piece, albeit an expensive one.

Early last week Apple released AirPort utilities and firmware for its wireless devices that support the 802.11n specification. In addition to general fixes, AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule have learned to provide remote access to disks using an iCloud account. Today I'll show you how to set up this feature, since some readers have not been able to do it.

Initial data

For experiments and writing instructions, I got a "thoroughbred American" - a brand new fifth generation AirPort Extreme wireless access point (model MD031LL / A), which supports 802.11 a / b / g / n specifications, simultaneous operation of two Wi-Fi frequency bands (2, 4GHz and 5GHz), multiple protocols and encryption algorithm.

In addition, you must have a Mac computer with Internet access, an updated AirPort 6.0 Utility, and the latest firmware (7.6.1) on the wireless gadget itself.

The external drive is connected to the AirPort Extreme's USB port.

Setting

Setup begins by opening AirPort Utility, located in the Applications > Utilities directory. Since the AirPort Extreme I tested was brand new, I installed a software update on it - thankfully, it's very easy to do, with just a few clicks.

Once the firmware is installed and the Apple Hotspot is connected to the Internet (two green lights will indicate this), you will need to select the AirPort Extreme in the Utility and click on the "Change" button to view additional settings.

On the first tab "Base. station." (I would tear my hands off for such localization) click on the add button (1). Next, in the window that appears, enter the login and password for your iCloud account (2), click on the "Login" button and wait until the status indicator turns green - this means that you have accepted your Apple ID and are ready for further configuration.

Now go to the last tab "Disks", set the checkbox "Allow file sharing" and assign the type of protection for shared drives. Three options are available to you, you can choose any of them, but I settled on the default option - “With device password”.

Once you've done that, click the "Update" button. And while the AirPort Express settings are being applied, let's move on to setting up the Mac computer: in System Preferences > iCloud, check the box next to "Access my Mac". It will take no more than a minute to activate the component.

Almost everything is ready, but now how to access the disk? To do this, just open the window, select our device in the "Sharing" category in the sidebar, after which it will be mounted to the system to any other share.

Now that's all for sure! You will be able to access files stored in your home from your work or any other Mac associated with your account. However, it is worth remembering that the connection speed depends entirely on your Internet connection. Naturally, the instruction is also suitable for the Time Capsule.

By the way, I almost forgot to thank you for the AirPort Extreme provided for experiments.

There were several questions in the discussion yesterday about how to make the Time Capsule, this useful gadget from Apple, even more useful. Time Capsule, remember, is a combination device that contains a WiFi router and a hard drive that is available over the network for Macs. Accordingly, the device has two main purposes - to store backups created by Time Machine and distribute a WiFi signal for computers and other devices.
With WiFi, the easiest thing is - Time Capsule can receive Internet from a provider (with Ethernet or PPPoE, raising a VPN connection, like Beeline's, is not supported), and distribute it according to various 802.11abgn standards. Moreover, the modern version of the Time Capsule (like the Airport Extreme) has two antennas built in at once, to support the old (slow) and new (fast) standards. This is convenient if there are devices at home that do not support new standards, then because of them you do not need to “lower” the connection type for all other devices. It so happened to me that there are generally three WiFi networks at home, one is distributed by NetGear (there is g), and two - 802.11n and 802.11n 5GHz - Airport Extreme. Very convenient 🙂 With the backup part a little more interesting.

If you plan to use the Time Capsule exclusively for storing unencrypted Time Machine backups or as a simple file dump, then no other gestures are needed, the device will serve just fine in the form in which it is available out of the box. I pursued two goals when planning the use of the Time Capsule.
1. Safety
You can never be too careful, especially in our world, where there are enough all kinds of assholes. Therefore, I also encrypt the disk on my computer using FileVault, and try to protect other data, if possible, so backups should also be protected. By default, even though the data is copied from the encrypted disk, it is already unprotected on the Time Capsule, and this bothered me. By the way, if you make a Time Machine backup to a locally connected via USB / Firewire / Thunderbolt, then on OS X 10.7 you can also encrypt it using FileVault, and not worry about your data.
2. Storage of other data
When a computer has only 256GB of disk space, you start to be very careful about what is stored on your computer. In this regard, 70GB of not the largest music collection looks like a kind of burden that significantly interferes with the economical mode of data storage on a computer. There will always be some other content - photos, videos - that takes up a lot of space, and at the same time I want it to be quickly available. Leaving it on the Time Capsule disk where Time Machine is backing up is somehow dumb, because there is always a risk of losing this data.
Based on these two considerations, I wanted to find a solution that would allow the use of the Time Capsule, and at the same time satisfy all the necessary conditions for storing data. And such a solution was found, albeit non-trivial, but it works. I didn’t come up with it, the link above is the original, and on the blog there is a simplified version in a language that many people understand.
1. Find out the name of the computer. This can be done in System Preferences, in the Sharing section:

My MacBook Air is called Beauty because it is very beautiful, yes 🙂 It is important that the computer name does NOT contain spaces.
2. Find out the MAC address of your network card. The instructions said that you need the MAC address of the main Ethernet card, but since the MacBook Air does not have Ethernet, you need the MAC address of the WiFi adapter. What to do in the case of, say, iMac, where Ethernet is still present, I do not know, but I would still start with the MAC address of the Ethernet adapter. You can find the MAC address by going to the same System Preferences, the Network section, then in the column on the left, select WiFi, click the Advanced button ...

... after which a window opens for you, where the MAC address of your WiFi card will be written below:

Write it down for yourself, you will need it later.
3. Next, we assume that the disk from the Time Capsule is mounted on your Mac, because we will need to create an empty encrypted disk image and save it to the disk with the Time Capsule. To do this, you need to open the Disk Utility application, and select the command to create a new disk image. You will see the following dialog by default:

4. Next, you will need to take the following steps:
a) enter a name for the name of this disk image, which must contain the ComputerName_MAC address. (MAC address is specified without colons).
b) in the Name field enter the name of the computer
c) Specify the size of the disk image. Depends on the disk space of your computer and the disk space of the Time Capsule. For a typical home user, 300-500GB is enough
d) Disk image format - Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)
e) Encryption - 128bit AES. It is quite secure and still provides acceptable performance.
f) Partition - do not change, leave Single Partition, Apple Partition Map
g) Image Format - specify “sparse bundle disk image”.

The sparse bundle disk image format means that this disk image will not initially take up much space, but will grow as it fills up until it reaches the maximum value you specify. After that, Time Machine will understand that “the disk is full”, and will offer you to delete the oldest backups according to its own algorithm. If desired, using the command line, the size of the disk image can be increased.
When you save this disk image, Disk Utility will ask you to provide a password for it - this is usually required when you mount the disk image. Save the password in Keychain. Don't forget to save this disk image to a disk from the Time Capsule!
5. Open the Keychain Access application - this is the application that stores your passwords. You will need to find in the list of passwords the one you specified to mount the disk image. It's in your user keychain, which is most likely called login (mine is called login_renamed_1, historically, never mind). The important thing is that you need to transfer this object from your user login in a bunch of keys system- just grab and drag this object to system and release the mouse button.

6. Now the nonsense remains - to specify in the Time Machine settings the disk from the Time Capsule as a disk for saving Time Machine backups.

Please note that it is the disk from the Time Capsule that appears as the backup disk in the settings. However, street magic comes into play - the system itself mounts the disk image, uploads a backup to it (for the first time, the process takes a lot of time, although everything, of course, depends on how much data you have on your computer), and upon completion it unmounts the disk . In this case, the data is stored on an encrypted disk image, so even if someone gets physical access to the hard drive from the Time Capsule, they will have to work very hard to see your files. At the same time, you get a guarantee that Time Machine, while backing up, will not get carried away and will not destroy your data, remaining within the space allocated to it on the disk image.
There is another additional tip that I also used. By default, Time Machine backs up data every hour. This, of course, is useful, but I do not need such a frequency of saving backups. Therefore, you can use the TimeMachineEditor utility, which allows you to set the interval for creating Time Machine backups the way you like it. For me personally, it is enough to do this once a day. I hope these tips help you too.