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Time Capsule Not Using Server-Grade Hard Drive As Advertised? [Updated]

Saturday March 1, 2008 2:58 pm PST by longofest
MacRumors reader IntrinsicMac has noticed from teardown photos of Apple's Time Capsule that Apple is not using "server-class" hard drives as advertised, but rather Hitachi Deskstar drives which are typically considered consumer-grade.

When introduced, Apple described the 500 or 1 TB drive being used within Time Capsule as "server grade", and indeed continues to tout it as such today on its website.

Time Capsule is your one place for backing up everything. Its massive 500GB or 1TB server-grade hard drive gives you all the capacity and safety you need. So whether you have 250 songs or 250,000 songs to back up, room is the last thing youll run out of. And considering all that storage and protection come packaged in a high-speed Wi-Fi base station starting at $299, data isnt the only thing youre saving.


While it is unclear what practical impact the use of consumer drives will have on users, the advertising discrepancy has been alarming to some users.

Update: According to TidBITS, Apple has clarified that their assertion of "server-grade" is related to mean time between failure.

Chulani clarified that the "server-grade" drives in a Time Capsule are the same 7200 rpm drives used for Apple's Xserve servers, and that they have a higher mean time between failure (MTBF) rating than consumer drives. The MTBF for server-grade drives is often 1 million hours (114 years), which is a measure of probability; in this case, that out of a set of drives with similar properties, an extremely high percentage will still be fully functional after several years.

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IntrinsicMac
52 months ago
Why is no one talking about the fact that Apple didn't actually put an Enterprise grade HD in the machine?

See the fliker picture here of a 1TB teardown.

Notice the DeskStar Label? It's the consumer variant of the UltraStar drive and of course significantly cheaper.

I was waiting on the initial teardown reports and official reviews before taking the plunge, but now am a little skeptical of buying it if Apple isn't being truthful about whats actually being used inside.

Remaining pictures from the set are here and were taken by flikr user nakedmac.
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diamond.g
52 months ago

Holy crap - this is clearly false advertising and should open Apple up for lawsuits.

From the HGST website http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/DF2EF568E18716F5862572C20067A757/$file/Ultrastar_A7K1000_final_DS.pdf :

"...based on the popular Deskstar™ E7K500, the Ultrastar A7K1000 continues to set the standard in enterprise-class reliability and performance..."

Hitachi has a "server class" (Ultrastar) and "consumer grade" (Deskstar) drives, and Apple is using the consumer grade Deskstar drives. Newegg is selling the Deskstar 1TB for $240 and the Ultrastar for $320...

Newegg comparison of Deskstar and Ultrastar

Wow. This should be a page one story by itself.

Most people wont even notice the difference. Besides Apple could just remove the server grade line making it a moot point.

I'd rather just be able to have my backups sent to my server. I don't know why apple has to force us to buy a product in order to backup to other devices on our networks.

I'd also be happier if they sold time capsule as a shell so I can use my own hard drive.

Me too. Better yet I would like a time capsule that can plug into my existing network.
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flopticalcube
52 months ago

Most people wont even notice the difference. Besides Apple could just remove the server grade line making it a moot point.

Its hardly moot if they are selling the product as server-grade and delivering consumer-grade. Makes no difference if they remove the line. They have sold the product as advertised already.
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AidenShaw
52 months ago

Its hardly moot if they are selling the product as server-grade and delivering consumer-grade. Makes no difference if they remove the line. They have sold the product as advertised already.


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hotsauce3868
52 months ago
Sniff Sniff...

I smell a lawsuit.
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iJesus
52 months ago

Sniff Sniff...

I smell a lawsuit.


Agreed.

It is pretty stupid of Apple though.
They're doing a really bad job of keeping their word lately.
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cohibadad
52 months ago
that would be a problem if advertising one thing and delivering something inferior.

Ah, this dude looked into it a bit and found it is "server grade" http://blog.hardmac.com/archives/server-grade-hard-disk-in-time-capsule-lets-check
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iJesus
52 months ago
Let's see how long it takes them to fix the problem on their website...
;)
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MarlboroLite
52 months ago
Apple seems to have an honesty problem lately....
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Lefteous
52 months ago
Lawyers - come get some! :eek:
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