Posts by Bradley Wright

NASA test rocket explodes

Bang Crash Wallop - what no picture?

Sorry, I couldn't resist

:-)

Apple's Time Capsule: is its HDD really 'server grade'?

What Apple do to "Server" drives...

I think that "server" refers to Apple's selection process for the drives. When these drives are delivered to Apple they put them on soak for a few days and reject any with bad blocks - that's ANY errors. They then flash them with their own special firmware that allows for better error reporting and correction.

These error free drives are the ones they ship with XServes (and until recently) XServe RAID units. This is why a £90 drive costs £300 in Apple servers, not because they are fleecing us (well maybe) but that they have gone through the testing process.

I have had two fully loaded XServe RAIDs and 6 Xserves running continuously for the last 4 years. Apart from software updates, they have had 0% downtime. They must be doing something right

Those rejected ones go into the consumer machines - there's nothing really wrong with them, they just have some bad blocks.

Brad