Apple Time Capsule not 'server grade'

Apple's much-hyped marriage of a network-attached hard drive and a wireless access point, the Time Capsule, has been thoroughly dismantled by eager early adopters and it's revealed something interesting.

One of the main selling points of the device, and one that Apple made a big deal of in the original marketing materials, was the use of “server grade” hardware – specifically, the hard drive. It was thought that the use of a server-grade drive would ensure data security on the single-drive device.

Indeed, the Apple website still touts the device as having a “massive 500GB or 1TB server-grade hard drive.”

Now the early models have been dismantled however, it has become clear that Apple has been telling porkies. The drive used in the retail released versions of the Time Capsule is a Hitachi Deskstar – very much a consumer grade drive.

So what does this mean for Apple customers? Not a lot, to be honest. Although they'd be hard-pushed to claim that Desktars are enterprise-grade – Hitachi have a seperate range of Ultrastar drives for server use – the fact is that the drive does what it says on the tin. If Apple hadn't made quite such a fuss over the reliability of the hardware it would probably have gone unnoticed altogether.

Still, it does go to show that when you buy a sealed box you don't always know what you're getting: and that applies to any manufacturer.

Do you think Apple is deliberately misleading customers, or is it an honest miscommunication between the techies and the marketing department? Let us know in the forums.