Time Capsule teardown
Apple's Time Capsule hasn't even been shipping for a week yet, and Flickr user "nakedmac" has already dissected his Time Capsule. What may be surprising is that the Time Capsule is no more than an Airport Extreme with a hard drive. But remember when Steve said that the Time Capsule would feature a "server-grade hard drive?" Well, it features a Hitachi Deskstar hard drive. According to the Typical Mac User Podcast blog, the Hitachi hard drive isn't necessarily rated for "server-grade."[via Engadget]
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Russell said 2:30PM on 3-01-2008
Er... Why is it surprising that its an Airport Extreme with a hard drive? I thought thats what it was supposed to be?
What I'm curious to know is whether write speeds to the time capsule are better than the miserable write speeds to a USB hard drive plugged into an AEBS.
Reply
Mo said 2:32PM on 3-01-2008
I've got a sneaking feeling the USB ports on the AEBS are USB 1.1: nothing in any tech specs I can find state that it's USB 2.0 :(
Mo said 2:32PM on 3-01-2008
Depends what kind of server, really.
I've seen plenty of servers with PATA Maxtors in, for example.
It's a shady play by Steve, I think, but if he'd said “enterprise-grade” I'd be expecting some SCSI device—but he didn't.
Reply
Kenji F said 2:38PM on 3-01-2008
So it is a Hitachi HD. When will we start hearing about the "DeathStar" problems with it, only because is Hitachi?
Seriously though, I've seen more problems with recent Seagate drives (The infamous 7.01 FW shipped by Apple) than problems with Hitachi drives (not counting the 75GXP disaster of 2001)
(Disclaimer: Right now I have a 160GB Samsung in my PBG4)
Reply
ramond said 4:10PM on 3-01-2008
I havn't bought a Seagate since the patent lawsuit and they were forced to disable the acoustic management, thats why Seagates went from the quietest to the noisiest a few years ago. After trying every brand I think presently Western Digital are the best. And I'm happy Apple use them in the iMac. I would have bought the 1TB Time Capsule if it had a WD RE2-GP in it.
37prime said 2:50PM on 3-01-2008
My Time Capsule has Seagate Barracuda® ES SATA 3.0Gb/s 500-GB Hard Drive model number ST3500630NS.
Reply
ramond said 4:06PM on 3-01-2008
Now that IS a server grade drive. I wonder why the 500GB is but the 1TB isn't.
bistrojack said 5:12PM on 3-01-2008
If there isn't anything special about the hard drive, why won't a UBS connected drive work with Airport Extreme?
Reply
MikeJ9919 said 7:32PM on 3-01-2008
Because Steve and Co. want to make money on any new features they add? Even when they promised those features would be part of Leopard?
nakedmac said 9:18PM on 3-01-2008
Replacing the drive is easy.
1. Reformat the new drive with GUID partition map and HFS+ volume.
2. Install the new drive in the Time Capsule.
3. Use AirPort Utility to reformat the new drive for the Time Capsule.
4. Reset your Time Machine preferences to use the new volume.
Your done. Couldn't be simpler, though I did have to downgrade the drive to just the 200 GB SATA drive I had lying around.
I updated both the Flickr gallery set to show the procedure. :-D
Reply
futurepastnow said 3:18PM on 3-02-2008
I wonder if you could swap the drive with a WD GreenPower series drive and then unplug the fan... (the 750GB and terabyte GP drives spin at 5400RPM and run very cool)
I have no idea how loud the fan is, but it's bound to annoy someone.
haineux said 4:40AM on 3-02-2008
When the whole "IBM DeathStar" drive thing went down, an IBM guy claimed that the drives that were dying prematurely were not intended for server use; that they were only rated to be on 8 hours out of 24. IBM got sued, and settled, then sold their hard drive business to Hitachi.
Since then, Hitachi has come out with a lot of new drives using new technologies.
NakedMac's photo set on Flicker shows the Hitachi model number (7K1000). Here's the Hitachi data sheet for the drive: http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/67A68C59B27368FC862572570080FC70/$file/Deskstar7K1000_010307_final.pdf
Hitachi does, in fact, claim this drive is intended to be used in "network storage servers" and "commercial computing applications." It's right there on the spec sheet, and Steve Jobs was not lying.
That being said, I do wish it weren't called a "DeskStar." The name does not exactly provoke confidence and warm feelings.
The 500 GB Seagate drive mentioned above (ST3500630NS) has this data sheet: http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_barracuda_es.pdf
Bottom line: both drives have nearly IDENTICAL performance and reliability figures on the spec sheets. Both are fast, and both use state of the art perpendicular recording.
Big difference: the Hitachi has a 3 year warranty, the Seagate has a 5-year warranty. The maximum Apple warranty on a Time Capsule is 3 years, so there's not much point in the matter.
If you believe the spec sheets, that is. I guess Apple does, so we all have to, as well. Perhaps I'll find a way to clone the hard drive contents off to another drive once in a while, and let that drive be "off" the rest of the time, or use an offsite backup service.
In any case, Time Machine is a better strategy than what I had before.
Reply
Lace said 7:54AM on 3-02-2008
I would definitely replace the Harddrive against a Seagate. Seagate builds the coolest drives right know.
Reply
dpzeh said 9:30AM on 3-02-2008
So ... we're still not able to put anything but backup data on that drive, right?
Reply
JClark said 2:10PM on 3-02-2008
According to MacWorld's first look, it can be used like any other network attached storage. So no, we're not limited to just backup data. After all, the TC is Windows compatible, and since TM doesn't exist on Windows...