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I wrote this piece in February of 2008, and thought I would resurrect it in light of the recent controversy concerning its life expectancy.

A few months ago, I had a real scare with my hard drive. One of the bullet point selling points of Mac OS X 10.5 is Time Machine, the automatic backup software. As I thought about Time Capsule, my hard drive, and backups, I came to an awesome, terrible realization: all hard drives fail.

Looking over the specs, I can’t really find any way to replace the hard drive in this thing. This is critical, because it’s your last line of defense. If this thing goes down, you’re sunk.

Pondering the possibility of losing years of data on my disk, I realized how Apple could be setting itself up for failure. No, not because the device won’t sell — it will. And not because it isn’t marketed as another boutique product. It’s because the very device they’re selling can easily go against the convention they’re trying to enforce.

Years ago, Apple introduced this application called ‘Backup.’ It was part of the .Mac service, and it let you back things up in a simple, convenient way. That was the intention, anyways, as I’m not sure anybody really knows how to get the thing to work. And I’m pretty sure nobody’s dumb enough to trust it to back up anything more important than their Safari bookmarks.

That’s the problem with the backup solutions that are supposed to be what you would expect from Apple; not as feature–rich as you would hope, but comprehensive and very easy to use. They succeeded this time with Time Machine. And somehow, Backup yet lives — there must be a reason.

Getting to the reason for the continued existence of Backup led me to think about the rationale to make Time Capsule, the wire–less, hard–drive–based backup device. As Backup is to .Mac, Time Capsule is to local storage. They both follow the same mantra, but with vastly differing success.

Backup was always hampered by its connection to .Mac. There just wasn’t enough room to backup the files on your computer. You could, at most, back up a subset of the types of files like Word documents or all the files in your Documents folder. It surely wasn’t what you’d need for the ‘prosumer’ experience, and definitely wasn’t a professional–level solution.

Mac OS X 10.5 brought Time Machine, and the promise of backing up your entire file system, down to the minutia of your fonts and preference files. Sure, you needed a pretty big hard drive, but that sort of space is cheap right now, still more so that online. With a daily backup of everything — that comprehensive approach — you could get back what was lost, and that’s what we all want.

Selling hardware to meet that demand was the next logical step. Apple did this moving from iTunes to the iPod, and they’re doing the same thing from Time Machine to Time Capsule. The wireless capability is just a bullet point — what they’re really doing is selling convenience.

With that convenience, Apple is getting you to do something you should be doing: backing your data up. It makes everybody feel good, you see. Promote that healthy behavior. But it would make sense to use a piece of hardware you can fix, right?

As far as I can tell (since I haven’t been able to get my grimy paws on one, yet), there’s no way to change the hard drive in the Time Capsule. There’s a lot of precedent for this, from the iPod to the new MacBook Air. But that’s a bad idea when you’re using this as your solitary backup.

It’s the same problem you’d have if your primary disk went bad. One well–timed lightning bolt and every source of hope you’ve got is turned into stylish, over–priced paperweights. The message I’m trying to convey is this: instead of having one last chance (your hard drive) you’ve now got two (with Time Capsule). And until somebody does something about it, that’s all you’ve got.

I love fear–mongering. Even more so when it’s right in line with the idea Apple’s trying to get across to consumers. With Time Machine, they’re trying to say that cheap storage — online or local — is within the reach of pretty much everybody. If you can afford a computer with Leopard, you can afford to get a Time Capsule for your house.

Honestly, I agree. The thing that I’m wary of is that you’re purchasing a silver bullet — and that will lead people to the inevitable complacency. That lax attitude will lead to reliance on this system, and someday we’ll be watching videos about “Time Capsule’s Dirty Secret.” Nobody wants that to happen. Nobody.

So, solutions? I’m not sure. I’d really hate to think that this piece of hardware is going the same route as the iPods and Mac minis and Apple TVs and MacBook Airs before it. I’d hope that there was some way to replace the disk, or at least to get it recovered quickly. I would hate to think that people are trading a bag of magic beans for two bags of magic beans.