Time Capsule teardown

So ... we're still not able to put anything but backup data on that drive, right?

I would definitely replace the Harddrive against a Seagate. Seagate builds the coolest drives right know.

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.

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

If there isn't anything special about the hard drive, why won't a UBS connected drive work with Airport Extreme?

My Time Capsule has Seagate Barracuda® ES SATA 3.0Gb/s 500-GB Hard Drive model number ST3500630NS.

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)

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.

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.