Speeding up Time Capsule transfers?

First of all, your Time Capsule will automatically switch between 802.11a/g/n depending on the device connected to it. Also, if you're having problems with you use a directly connected USB drive, it may mean that your Time Capsule is having more problems processing and saving information instead of just receiving it. This may be a problem with its CPU. You should take it to have it checked by Apple. Also, do you use this Time Capsule alone, or are there other base stations on your network (Do you use Apple base stations as internet access points)? If you don't, you should look into doing that. It helps boost inter-device data transfer.

After some extensive research, I'm hearing that switching to 2.4ghz N-Only mode on my Time Capsule under wireless options would hopefully boost the wireless transfer speeds but I can't seem to find the "radio mode" in airport utility.

All Retina MacBook Pro models support 802.11n. The very latest ones, late-2013 and up, support both 802.11n & 802.11ac. For reference, 802.11n can operate on either the 2.4 or 5 GHz radio bands. 802.11ac, on the other hand, can only operate on the 5 GHz one. You best potential maximum bandwidth would be when both devices are operating in the 802.11ac mode and within the same room as each other. The next best would be 802.11n, but still in the same room. Also, it is very important to have little or no types of Wi-Fi interference present.

With the 802.11ac models, the AirPort Utility no longer provides an option to change Radio modes. As mcconnel points out, your Time Capsule will choose the appropriate mode for your device and will switch modes as the connection distance (or presence of Wi-Fi interference) between them increases.

To achieve the absolute maximum bandwidth between your MBP & the Time Capsule, you will need to interconnect them with Ethernet. For your Retina MBP, you would need to get an Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter.

It also says under my wireless clients, my Macbook's wireless transfer speed is rated at 256mb/s which I greatly disapprove because my iPhoto library seems to transfer at 0.5mb/s when I look at the transfer process. It's like, +0.1mb every second from what I see. (the thing that says #mb out of #mb.)

The Transfer Speed value is the theoretical maximum data link speed that the real-time connection between the MBP & the router. It is, however, not the same as the actual data transfer rate which is significantly lower ... as you have seen. The reasons for the big difference between the "link" and actual rates include the high overhead involved in wireless connections (lots of bits are required for communicating information other than the actual data you are trying to send or receive) and for data retransmission (due to the inherent unreliability of a wireless connection).

Also, you need to take into consideration the link speed between the Time Capsule and the internal (or external) hard drive ... and for standard drives, the spin-up rate & rotation rate of the disks themselves.

To get a more accurate reading of your actual data rates I would suggest that you run some tests.

For comparison I did a couple of simple tests for my network. In my case, I tested throughput using an Intel Mac mini and an 3rd generation AEBSn. Attached to the AEBSn is a NewerTech MiniStack V3. The basic network path between them is: Mac mini > Ethernet switch > Cisco Router > AEBSn > MiniStack. As you can imagine, you can have literally hundreds of other network configurations and each will be unique for their overall throughput characteristics.

I first measured throughput from the Mini to the AEBSn by using IPNetTunerX. I used iPNetTunerX's Link Rate test tool. I did five runs and the average throughput was found to be 115 Mbps (14.4 MBps).

To measure throughput to the MiniStack, I first created a 1 GB disk image file using the Disk Utility. I then copied this file to a folder on the MiniStack. To get the throughput reading I used Net Monitor. I could have easily used OS X's Activity Monitor for this as well. I did five runs of copying this file and the average throughput was found to be 95 Mbps (11.88 MBps). A second way to run a throughput test to the AirPort Disk is to use AJA System Test. System Test will automatically create a temporary file and perform read/write tests, then delete the file when done.

As I expected the throughput to the AirPort Disk would be lower as it would be additive. All in all, it took under 2 minutes to transfer the file.

You can perform similar tests to determine if the issue is the connection to your Time Capsule or to the external USB HDD that you are using. These two values should not be off more than 20-25%. If they are, I would suspect the USB HDD. If both are extremely low, then it would indicate the connection to the AEBSn will require further troubleshooting.

Some things you can do to help improve the data transfer rate.

• If not already, change the Wireless Encryption type to: WPA2 Personnal
• Remove or reduce the presence of Wi-Fi interference.
• Switch the connection between the MBP & the Time Capsule to an Ethernet one.