Apple's Time Capsule Comes With A 'Server-Grade' Hard-Drive

Apple announced its "Time Capsule" wireless backup device that works in conjunction with the Time Machine in the new Leopard OS. The Time Capsule backup system integrates 802.11n networking features and can back-up multiple Mac computers to a single Time Capsule.

"Bring Time Capsule home, plug it in, click a few buttons on your Macs and voila -- all the Macs in your house are being backed up automatically, every hour of every day," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "With Time Capsule and Time Machine, all your irreplaceable photos, movies and documents are automatically protected and incredibly easy to retrieve if they are ever lost."

In the new Time Capsule wireless hard drive, Apple has integrated a server-grade hard disk, although the device is intended for home use rather than for the enterprise sector. This is an important addition, that is alleged to boost the device's performance.

Hard-drive manufacturers build two types of hard-disks: consumer or server-grade (also known as "enterprise"). The main distinction between them is that server-grade drives are more thoroughly tested in order to ensure that the device can work at least 1 million hours between failure occurs, calculated at 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week usage.

This is an important aspect, as this guarantees a hard-drive's reliability. It is very hard to estimate the Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF), but at the same time it is a critical aspect, and this is the main reason that pushes data centers choose the expensive enterprise-class drives.

The Time Capsule can also connect to peripherals, such as printers and act as a printing server. Connected Mac computers will be able to send their printing jobs directly to the printer. It can also act as a wireless base station for setting up a wireless network comprised of up to 50 Mac users. The wireless Time Capsule works in both the 2.4 and the 5 GHz radio spectrum and come with dual-band antennae.

Time Capsule is available in two capacities: the 500GB model can be purchased for $299, while the 1TB version is available for $499.