New Apple Time Capsule Drives Aren't Actually "Server Grade"

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This week, Apple introduced a slight product refresh of their Time Capsule wireless backup/storage boxes. They now come in 2TB and 3TB sizes, which is good. On their website, Apple promises that the hard drives in side are “server-grade”. Unfortunately, that’s not quite true as website HardMac took the new Time Capsules apart and found that they’re just off-the-shelf regular desktop Western Digital hard drives.

As you can see from the picture, it’s a rather stock Western Digital Caviar Green drive, save for the cool Apple logo printed on the label. Unfortunately, this “WD20EARS” is rather stock as far as hard drive go. A “server-grade” drive has a MTBF (mean time between failures) of about 1 million hours, and there’s no indication that this WD20EARS meets these requirements.

According to website SlashGear, the last revision of the Apple Time Capsule also promised “server-grade” drives, but the drives were just, off-the-shelf regular Hitachi Desktsar drives. However, with that revision, Apple said that the Deskstar drives used in the Time Capsule had a higher MTBF than a consumer drive. Apple also apparently used the same Hitachi Deskstar drives in their (now discontinued) Xserve servers, so that makes them “server-grade”, right? (Western Digital recently made a bid to acquire Hitachi’s storage division, ironically)

The new Apple Time Capsules are pretty pricey, with Apple asking $299 for the 2TB model and $399 for the 3TB model. There are definitely cheaper (and safer) ways to back up your data, but as we’ve seen time and time again, people are proud to have everything Apple in their house (MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPad), which means they’re willing to overpay for the Time Capsule backup box and the AirPort WiFi hub.