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

many many pages, but my understanding is that if there is an 'e' in the part number that designates 'enterprise' which would make an otherwise 'consumer' drive into a 'server grade' drive.

so if a part number listed here somewhere can it be listed again

I will double check my source to make sure.
 
Well whatever the definition someone is bound to call their state government and we will know soon if they take on Apple or not. It is just a matter of time.

We will see.
 
corywoolf said:
I can't believe they would use the DEATHStar in any of their products. Hitachi hard drives are about as reliable as a drunk cab driver. I would have thought Seagate or WD. (I have had bad luck with Hitachi drives)
DeathStar.gif
Click to expand...

The Hitachi Deathstar in my iMac has already failed TWICE!!!!
unbeliev:mad:able
 
flopticalcube said:
Probably have to wait and see if the drives start failing in unreasonable numbers before they "should". Tough to build a case on dubious "definitions".
Click to expand...

You mean wait a year or two?

I did not get one of those babies, so I do not care that much either way, however different states have different customer protection laws so this is bound to be tested a lot quicker than that. It is just a matter of time before someone complains.
 
CLuv said:
Here's some

View attachment 105768

for all the whine.
Click to expand...

It's a significant issue because server grade is not supposed to fail even when hot.
The MAJOR issure is that the Apple enclosure is tiny without great ventilation-> with constant spinning this sets up for excessive heat and increases the potential for failure (something you don't want your back up drive to do)
 
I can see why people are aggravated about it, the drive is supposed to contain their data for safeguarding, yet it is not mirroring the backup so there is risk and I guess to lower the concern Apple stated server grade, yet the customer understanding and apparently what apple means is different. There may still be a case as the intend appeared to be to calm down fears yet what is delivered is a standard drive.

I am not a lawyer, but I would think some lawyer or the government may take them on as it is cheaper to add a better drive than to go to court. In Europe where a lot of the laws to protect consumers are even stronger than in the states, there maybe a better chance that Apple will be taken on.

Just my opinion
 
manhattanboy said:
It's a significant issue because server grade is not supposed to fail even when hot.
Click to expand...

"Server grade" in Apple-speak is meaningless, we've learned.

Drives labeled "Enterprise grade" from a disk vendor are somewhat less likely to fail, that's all. They'll still fail, but statistically less often.

In practical terms, expect all drives to fail. Protect critical data with redundancy (RAID, multiple copies, ...).

Be especially careful about related failures - you're better off buying drives of different types or from different manufacturers. If you buy a batch of identical drives with close serial numbers, the chances are higher that you'll suffer multiple failures in a short time window.
 
Tosser said:
Sorry, but I really don't give a rat's arse about you not losing sleep over this, while calling people whiners. To me, it's about taking marketing too far, and in reality saying to people "this is better than most of the rest out there", yet in reality it isn't. It's "false marketing", "misleading marketing" or whatever a native english speaker would call this unethical way of marketing a product. Yes, they might steer clear on a technicality, but that doesn't mean they we'ren't trying to mislead the average consumer.
Click to expand...

Do a quick google on MTBF hard drives, and you will find that these ratings are estimates based on past history of components and mathematical models. Anecdotal evidence of of a particular drive or family of drives rate of failure is probably as reliable a method. Carnegie Mellon did a study which basically indicated that MTBF in some cases was off by a factor of 15x; i.e., a much higher failure rate.

Either way, the mean time between failure is as well based on the expected obsolescence of the hard drive, which is most likely 5 to 7 years. So to get the 1 million hour MTBF, you still would need to replace drives at the expected time of obsolescence.

My point is that MTBF really doesn't mean all that much without context, and that is mostly lacking in this thread. As well, you might find that enterprise drives might have the same MTBF as consumer drives, but longer expected lives.

Looking at Time Capsule, it is pretty apparent that Apple's intention and buyers perception is that this is a drive designed for backup, so it would get fairly modest duty compared to the typical main drive on a computer. Unless there are early reports of high failure rates, I would expect a 5-7 year useful life, which to me certainly meets the expectations of a $299.00 drive.
 
atthecross said:
Good info here with a close up picture of hdd with part number visible. There is also a link to hitachi's spec sheet saying that this drive can be used in a 'network storage server'
Click to expand...

No argument, but the fact remains that the drive has "Desk" in its name, and that Hitachi has a higher reliability server-grade model called the "Ultrastar".

And there's the fact that the 500 GB Time Capsule uses the Seagate "ES - Enterprise Storage" enhanced reliability drive.

Hitachi has "good" and "better" grade drives. Apple is using the "good" drives for the 1 TB model. Seagate has "good" and "better" - and Apple is using the "better" drives in the 0.5 TB model.

Apple is using the "good" 1 TB drives and marketing them in a way that people would expect "better" drives. That's what is misleading and disappointing.
 
AidenShaw said:
The one line that the dude found in the Deskstar docs about using it in NAS storage servers doesn't elevate it to server grade.

Note that HGST rates the Ultrastar as 1.2 million hour MTBF, and they don't even quote an MTBF for the Deskstar.
Click to expand...

Huh? The drive manufacturer says it can be used in storage servers and Apple uses it in their own servers, but it's not server grade?

Just how do you define server grade to exclude a drive that both Apple and HP say is a server drive?

Amazing the lengths some people will go to to bash Apple.
 
some12b said:
Not only is this a real issue, this also violates several laws including the mis-representation act.
Click to expand...

Which law is that? Please state the specific law and section which states that Apple can't advertise a drive as 'server grade' when Apple uses it in servers and the drive manufacturer says it's suitable for server use.

I'm going to be interested in hearing which law Apple broke.
 
quantumbits said:
Server-grade was clearly meant to imply enterprise level. No amount of revisionist BS can change that gaffe.
Click to expand...

It was? Clearly?

Sorry, but if you wanted enterprise level performance, you should have specified a RAID level 5 array with at least 5 SCSI drives and redundant power supplies. No one in their right mind would consider a $400 device with a single hard drive to be enterprise level.
 
Cloudmover said:
Excellent Posts.

If the Hitachi Deskstar IS the hard drive that is being used in Apple Xserve servers than what is the problem? Maybe the webmasters at MacRumors should revise the "Time Capsule Not Using Server-Grade Hard Drive As Advertised" headline.

It seems like people are getting worked up over a false premise.
Click to expand...

Apple is putting desktop-grade drives in their server line, and thereby claiming that they are putting server grade hard drives in the time capsule.
 
ok, here's the reply from my friend, creator or FluidXP, (if you're a gamer you should be familiar with FluidXP).

It's lengthy but so is this thread so here goes...

"You can do a raid with a regular hard drive but depending on what type and
whose raid you are going to use it might not be a good idea.

Raid configurations are usually for some type of a server redundancy and
there is special things going on as far as what hdds are doing in a raid.

The "e" drives or enterprise drives are designed specifically for raid
configurations, desktop drives are not. I have seen many an operating
system take a dump because of using raid 1 on drives not specifically
designed for that as oppose to ones that were designed for that.

So basically in my opinion, for whatever its worth, you roll the dice when
doing raid with ntfs and not using enterprise rated drives. The
manufactures will not come out and say that you can't use these drives but
more and more of them, especially the good ones, are making specific drives for raided configurations.

It would probably be very prudent that if you are going to raid with a
regular drive to make sure that the other drive is identical and also make
sure that you have a backup of your important data.

The other thing that you will want to do is after you load your os and get
everything setup make a system restore point, might be good to also make a backup of your registry.

With software corruption, it does not matter whether your system was raided or not, you will be down because you will lose your os. If you have done a system restore point it will write that code on the hard drive and even if the hive gets corrupted which is what I usually see, you can restore the os from the dos shell in xp or vista."

I know he's talking about raid configuration, but that's a significant reason for the 'enterprise' rated drives.

Here's another reply after I told him about the concerns being raised here.

"Wow! That is interesting, Hitachi drives (formerly IBM) were and are still
some of the worst drives out there. I have used every drive out there and
based on what I have experienced in our servers which we build (10-20
monthly) Seagate makes the most reliable drives out there. You just have to make sure to get the right drive for the application. I kid you not, I have
seen more ibm and Hitachi drives fail from failure over the last 4 years
second only to Maxtor and now Maxtor is better because it is owned by
Seagate.

Well, this is usually how it goes in the computer industry, companies began
to compromise quality because they have built up a reputation. I have
watched pretty much all of them go the way of the dodo, now all of them are just driven by marketing and not on their product quality. If consumers
knew how bad the failure rates on some of these products were it would sure cause them to look real close at some other alternatives besides the ones in the spotlight all the time. But hey, HP and Dell are looking for me to become a warranty center so I guess that is a good thing. I can start a new motto "build the best and repair the rest"."

Integrity PC Systems & Technologies, Inc.
World Supplier of Fluid XP+ Products
 
AidenShaw said:
I missed the link for HP, where does HP say that a Deskstar is a server class drive?

My HP docs push 10K and 15K 2.5" SAS as the only real enterprise class drives, with SATA for low end or "near-line" storage.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I meant Hitachi. The drive manufacturer says it can be used in servers. Apple uses it in their servers.

The only ones saying it can't be used in servers are a bunch of whiners here.
 
viggen9 said:
Apple is putting desktop-grade drives in their server line, and thereby claiming that they are putting server grade hard drives in the time capsule.
Click to expand...

The drive manufacturer says they can be used in servers. Apple uses them in servers. Since there's no industry standard definition of 'server grade', that's more than sufficient to establish that they're server grade.
 
atthecross said:
ok, here's the reply from my friend, creator or FluidXP, (if you're a gamer you should be familiar with FluidXP).
Click to expand...

That's nice. If he ever becomes a recognized industry expert in hard drives, perhaps we'll take him seriously. Meanwhile, why should we believe him over the drive manufacturer (who says it can be used in servers) and Apple (who uses it in servers)?
 
jragosta said:
That's nice. If he ever becomes a recognized industry expert in hard drives, perhaps we'll take him seriously. Meanwhile, why should we believe him over the drive manufacturer (who says it can be used in servers) and Apple (who uses it in servers)?
Click to expand...

I guess this is what it all comes down to. Who defines 'server grade' and what is that definition?

If the understanding of what means 'server grade' was so widespread and unquestionable it would probably be a different story...

However, that not being the case its fine for Apple to fall back on a more 'lay' interpretation of the term... that is... it's a drive that's in the same grade as drives used in some servers. The fact that its quite clearly used in some servers means that it can be defined as 'server grade' at least on a very broad level.

There's no real way to argue that Apple has mislead. If you're upset about it get a refund. I'm willing to bet most people on here whinging and whining didn't even buy one.
 
AlphaBob said:
That is false advertising, but is typical of Apple of late -- revisionist history.

Time Machine and Time Capsule have class action written all over them. This is TWICE in two months that Apple has stated one set of features, gotten early adopters to buy in, then switched to an inferrior offering when shipping. (Saying first that Time Machine would work with APE disks, then that Time Capsule would use server grade drives).

This is simply NOT ACCEPTABLE and is deceptive marketing practice that should result in the dismissal of some folks at Apple.

Lame.
:mad:
Click to expand...

You don't know what a class action lawsuit is, do you? I'm simply amazed at how emotionally reactive people have been regarding the whole TM/TC issue.
For the last time, don't buy something before it's actually been released because until it becomes a product you can buy in the stores, things are subject to change. Every single feature of Leopard was, during it's transition from Beta to Gold, in flux. If you bought an AES with the hope of using Time Machine with it, you made a mistake.
Lastly, everyone complains about how secretive Apple is, and yet when they announce some details of an unfinished product, people go for their throats when things aren't what they expected.
A beta is a beta.

arn said:
I page 2'd this article, since I have a different opinion on the matter than Longofest, who wrote it.

To me "server grade" is a non-specific term. It's a descriptive term, not a technical one. It's like saying "really good hard drive". I don't think it is something that can be considered a precise term.

arn
Click to expand...

Arn, I agree whole-heartedly. The term was fuzzy at best and I made my decision to buy the Time Capsule because of its ability to interact with Time Machine over a wireless network. That's a great advantage for me, that and the fact that it replaces three separate devices that are currently on my desk, burning up electricity and wasting space.

I like the little device and I'll have one (soon, I hope) and I don't care if the device has a "server-grade" sticker on the box.
 
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