Time Capsules’ Server-Grade Hard Drive Really?
Editorial:
Less than twenty four hours after the new Apple Time Capsule became generally available, flickr pictures by “Nakedmac” show the dissection of this unit.
The pictures reveal that the 1TB “server grade” hard drive inside this unit is a
HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000 HDS721010KLA330
(0A34915) 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
This drive currently sells at NewEgg for $304.99 with a $30 rebate making it $274.99
This means the $499.00 Time Capsule is, at the hardware level, an Airport Extreme (U.S. $179.00) + HITHACI Desktar 7K100 (U.S. $274.99), making this unit’s hardware cost retail U.S. $453.99. Ok, seems to me that additional U.S. $46.01 is a reasonable price to pay for Apple’s engineering, marketing and manufacturing costs. So from that point of view, Time Capsule seems like a very good deal.
However, Steve Jobs said during the Macworld Expo, that the Time Capsule has a”Server-Grade Storage.” To me what makes a hard drive “server-grade” is these hard drives are more rigorously tested. That means that they typically guarantee over 1 million hours Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF), assuming 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week usage. It also means that manufactures are proud to quote MTBF on their Data Sheets so that IT managers have numbers to quote to their IT departments. You can find more information on this very good PC World article. here.
If you look at the Data Sheet for the Time Capsules’ Hatachi drives you see some very impressive statistics clearly showing this is a very fast, as well as a heat and power efficient drive. However, there are no MTBF stats quoted in the Data Sheet. Compare that to the Barracuda® ES.2 Hard Drives data sheet which clearly states under the “reliability section” a MTBF number of 1.2 Million hours. That same statistic does not appear anywhere in the HITHACI Desktar 7K100 Data Sheet.
So, I’ll say it now “for the flamers,” I am not any kind of hard drive expert, I am a consumer who listens and investigates. I don’t see that the Hitachi drive that Apple is delivering with Time Capsule qualifies as a server-grade hard drive, if we apply the Enterprise standard of having manufactures proudly publish MTBF statistics on their Data Sheets. I hope I’m corrected , but at first glance it seems that Apple has delivered a very well priced product, but a server-class Hard Drive? Not that I can see.
Segate Data Sheet excerpt
HITHACI Desktar 7K100 Data Sheet Excerpt
Update: Here is a great article from eweek.com challenging the whole MTBF concept. Thanks to @johnstarta for passing it along. Also here is another link to specs on this drive from the Windows Marketplace folks.
Update: 8:12PM PT:
The story keeps on building. TidBITS states that
”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.”
Thanks Victor. I wanted a Time Capsule till I saw this. A freaking “Deathstar” drive? I have not had good luck with these. All the ones we had in Dell's at work crapped out in waves.
Comment by georgestarcher — March 1, 2008 @ 10:50 am
Another tip-off that this is not a “server-grade” hard drive is that it only has a 3 year warranty. Most server-grade HDDs have a 5 year warranty. Also, warranties assume that the drive is not running 24×7. I can't remember the exact ratio but I think it's calculated at something like 16 hours per day over a 3 year period.
Comment by Jason Fiset — March 1, 2008 @ 10:55 am
Would you look at that: tuaw.com/2008/03/01/time-capsule-teardown/
Comment by John — March 1, 2008 @ 1:35 pm
Why would Apple lie about something like this? It's not in their nature. *puzzled*
Comment by kknupp — March 1, 2008 @ 1:45 pm
Awesome Investigative Reporting! Oops they did it again!
Comment by Mac Trucker — March 1, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
That looks like a regular consumer hard drive to me. personally I interpreted “server grade hard drive” to mean SCSI or something like that. A regular SATA hard drive is not what I imagined Steve meant. However, the markup looks very low so it does look like a fairly priced product which is a good thing.
Comment by Bart Busschots — March 1, 2008 @ 3:43 pm
MTBF is not useless as a concept. Not even as a reported statistic. However like with any statistic if the vendor falsely reports inflated numbers then it is of little value. But that is true of any statistic. Saying MTBF is useless is overstating the issue. If a vendor is being false just call them out on it.
Comment by georgestarcher — March 1, 2008 @ 3:51 pm
[...] 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 [...]
Pingback by Time Capsule Teardown « aGEEKspot — March 1, 2008 @ 1:44 pm
A server grade drive is one specified, configured and capable for server usage patterns, including: 24/7 running plus extended periods of flat out running. The Hitachi drive is available so specified. A desktop drive is expected to be powered down or spun down two thirds of the time, and to have relatively intermittent use even when the user is present.
MTBF is not a property of a single drive; it's a measure of how many failures to expect when running a large population of drives to the end of their service life (typically 5 years). With an MTBF of one million hours, about one drive in 25 fails before the end of its service life.
About the “deathstar” comment. Several years ago, Hitachi/IBM briefly had a manufacturing issue that resulted in a large failure rate. Neither that drive, nor this newer drive using the same “deskstar” branding in its desktop configuration were intrinsically unreliable. Manufaturers whose drives are consistently unreliable exit the business fairly rapidly. (Rodime, Micropolis).
Comment by sleepy — March 1, 2008 @ 5:38 pm
[...] Cajiao has posted that it doesn’t appear that Apple’s Time Capsule is using Server-Grade hard drives. It [...]
Pingback by Time Capsule Not Using a Server-Grade Hard Drive? | Mactropolis.com - Your Friendly Global Mac Community — March 1, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
can i replace the drive ?
Comment by mashi — March 1, 2008 @ 7:46 pm
Great job Victor, thanks to you and others for bringing this to our attention.
I agree, when you break down the price, it's still a good deal. But, I do have issues with this. I had a 1TB model on order with Amazon until I cancelled it this evening. I think I'm going to give it a few weeks to see where all this is going. NakedMac (above), has shown that almost any SATA drive will work, so I may purchase the cheaper model, and get my own bona-fide “server-class” drive and put in there. I'm sure the Hitachi is a decent drive with a good warranty, but I want a warranty that i never have to use. I intend to use it back up several Macs in my office and I really don't want any issues at all, and I want to feel confident in my backups.
Also, if you read the comments on the article, an owner of a 500G model found he did indeed have a much better drive than the 1TB model. That's just weird!
I think it's a bit deceptive to advertise the drive as something better than it really is. I love Apple and I've been a loyal fan since 1989 when I got my SE/30. But sometimes they do stuff that just makes me crazy! This is one of those things!
Comment by AlanR — March 1, 2008 @ 8:23 pm
I'd confirm that these are the same drives that Apple has used in both Mac Pro's (now often used as servers) and Xserves. I can't say that I have seen a MTBF rating for them, but I have not seen many failures either. Everyone has different experiences I would never expect any drive to last for 100 years; EVER.
Comment by Matt Hoult — March 2, 2008 @ 12:04 am
This drive is not the same animal as the IBM-made drives that prompted a class action lawsuit. The 7K1000 drive may say “DeskStar”, but it has much better specs.
Both the Barracuda and the DeskStar have IDENTICAL “Non-recoverable Error Rates” — which is another way of quoting reliability. (1 error per 1 quadrillion bits transferred.) Also, Hitachi claims 50,000 start-stop cycles, which is the same as drives rated 1.2 million hours MTBF. The DeskStar spec sheet also claims that the drive is intended for “network storage servers” and “commercial computing applications.”
By these measures, Steve Jobs clearly was not lying. On the other hand, Hitachi sells a similar drive with a longer warranty under the brand name “UltraStar.”
Comment by haineux — March 2, 2008 @ 4:29 am
At this point, I'd trust consumer Hitachi's over consumer Seagates any day.
Comment by MacGui — March 2, 2008 @ 11:38 am
Much ado Time Capsule
A little “much ado nothing” … No server class hard disk in Apples Time Capsule. You can find rants about that here (on german) and here (on english).
You dont really need an enterprise class harddrive in the Time Capsule. The Time Capsule HD s…
Trackback by c0t0d0s0.org — March 2, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
You got linked to from TUAW
::Squeal::
Comment by Tom — March 2, 2008 @ 8:09 pm
[...] Typical Mac User Podcast » Time Capsules’ Server-Grade Hard Drive Really? Listen, folks, no ATA disk is “server-grade.” And they’re all data loss time bombs. I’d be asking when I can get a Time Capsule that has mirrored drives. [...]
Pingback by links for 2008-03-03 : Bob Plankers, The Lone Sysadmin — March 2, 2008 @ 10:20 pm
I've had some of these drives die on their second year of service, to the day. Most do not make it that long. And the travelstar, aka mobile deathstar, don't even get me started on that.
Perhaps it will last longer in an apple manufactured device, due to the difference in file system and way of accessing, not to mention the lower average fragmentation and total accumulated movement of the armature to read a single file. I'd love to buy one, but just can't justify it until I see some solid reliability figures.
Keep in mind that a single ideal year is only 61,320 hours. I'ver never really seen any of the hitachi drives make it past year 5, nor would I risk my data on it. As with all important things, keep a 2nd or 3rd backup.
Comment by wizechatmgr — March 3, 2008 @ 9:33 am
Victor
You have to remember that Apple (and Newegg) are not paying retail prices for the hardware. Standard markup is probably on the order of 25 to 50% which reduces the actual wholesale price of the drive to around $150/unit.
>>JD<<
Comment by JD — March 6, 2008 @ 8:20 am
When you update your blog you show the update time, but not the date. Would be helpful to have the date too, so we can compare the update to the reader's comments after the update.
Keep up the good work.
Comment by GizmoDan — March 7, 2008 @ 5:32 pm
Great point! Great article, yet MTBF as a whole should be rethought for manufacturers specs.
http://db.usenix.org/events/fast07/tech/schroed...
MTBF of 114 does not necessarily mean a single drive will last 114 years. It is simply the sum of uptime and downtime divided by the number of failures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTBF
The first problem is that generally to manufacturers MTBF does not include any stats from infant mortality and especially not the end of life figures into their equation. This means if a drive dies in their labs during testing it doesn't count because its less than a year old and obviously they do not have time to test the drives for 100, 10 or even 1 year before the disk stats are calculated.
Since MTBF is mearly a ratio of time the drive is in use to the number of failures excluding those that die prematurely, the question we need to hold manufacturers accountable for are real figures that mean something to customers.
Comment by chrisklapp — March 22, 2008 @ 10:49 am
Thats odd that a huge company as Apple had to lie about something like this….
Comment by How to Partition a Hard Drive — November 5, 2008 @ 8:11 am
[...] 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 [...]
Pingback by Time Capsule teardown « Jonathan Mills — March 12, 2009 @ 12:21 am
To pay significant extra for Mac marketing cost doesn't seems to be a good idea even if we have similar performance, and it is not that way in the case
Comment by Lamsd — July 15, 2010 @ 1:04 am
To pay significant extra for Mac marketing cost doesn’t seems to be a good idea even if we have similar performance, and it is not that way in the case
Comment by Lamsd — July 15, 2010 @ 8:04 am