newer hard drives less reliable?

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Nick R
Weren't those the quantum bigfoot drives colt?


Not at 105MB, those predate the Bigfoot, which, IIRC, were 2.5GB.

I had a number of the big 5.25" HDD's back in the day. The one that came in my 8088 was 30MB.

 

[Virtuoso]

Hehe. My 8088 had a 20. Super fast compared to the 360k 5.25" floppy!

I also had one of those (super slow) Quantum BigFoot's at 12gb. First drive I ever owned that failed. Since then I've had a couple Western Digital's die; but that's all I buy so it's not surprising.

I seem to remember a slew of IBM DeskStar's that left before their time.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Virtuoso
Hehe. My 8088 had a 20. Super fast compared to the 360k 5.25" floppy!

I also had one of those (super slow) Quantum BigFoot's at 12gb. First drive I ever owned that failed. Since then I've had a couple Western Digital's die; but that's all I buy so it's not surprising.

I seem to remember a slew of IBM DeskStar's that left before their time.


Yes, that's how the Deathstar name came about.

Also, the Fujitsu 40GB hard drives had like the highest failure rate of any drive in history. I remember them being RMA'd by the SKID

 

[johnachak]

Actually, nowadays drives are much cheaper. The amount of storage for $200 is incredible. I do know that when we spec'ed drives for important data (corporate), the most reliable drives were like 10x the price of consumer drives and they had to be set in a redundant array for when one did bite it.

 

[johnachak]

I believe that one of the problems is the combination of high speed/high capacity drives in a mini case. Heck, we used to use separate drive coolers and used at least mid towers with front/rear/powersupply/hdcooler fans moving air through the box. (Not counting the CPU and Video card fans).

The older (more dependable) drives were more expensive per Mb, and were much slower spinning.

To this day, I make sure to open the box up and clear the dust from all vents/holes.

 

[johnachak]

[/quote]
Thats hilarious. Those were probably those old 5.25" drives Ive only ever seen one of. [/quote]

I think I still have at least one of them in working order in my garage. all drives were 5.25 at one point, from 20 mb on up to 250 mb which is when I believe the little ones came around. The PC cases had the rails for the 5.25's so you needed an adapter for the 3.5's to fit in a top bay. same for the floppies, originally, all 5.25's, then, they came up with the 760mb 3.25's in the hard plastic case. Prior to that, the floppies were, floppy.

 

[Virtuoso]

The 3.5" in low-density format were 720kb. Had to 'upgrade' my Epson Equity I+ to take them!

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: johnachak

The older (more dependable) drives were more expensive per Mb, and were much slower spinning.


Some of the most reliable drives ever made were the old Seagate Cheatah drives, which, although they were SCSI, spun at 10,000RPM.

They were also lower capacity than their lower spindle speed Barracuda siblings, which were 7,200RPM but just as reliable.

Your point about heat is spot-on though. A quick look at how any server keeps the drives cool supports that.

 

[javacontour]

It was the Quantum ProDrive 105mb drive.

I was thinking Maxtor, but after some research, it was the Quantum ProDrive 105mb disk that came with the SPARCstation 1, 1+ and possibly the SS2.

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Originally Posted By: Nick R
Weren't those the quantum bigfoot drives colt?


Not at 105MB, those predate the Bigfoot, which, IIRC, were 2.5GB.

I had a number of the big 5.25" HDD's back in the day. The one that came in my 8088 was 30MB.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL

Some of the most reliable drives ever made were the old Seagate Cheatah drives, which, although they were SCSI, spun at 10,000RPM.

They were also lower capacity than their lower spindle speed Barracuda siblings, which were 7,200RPM but just as reliable.

Your point about heat is spot-on though. A quick look at how any server keeps the drives cool supports that.


And if I remember right these 10000rpm drives are all 2.5" in a heat sink that fit 3.5" slot. The head linear speed would be too high at the outer tracks at 10000rpm for reliability. The platter would not be rigid enough, and the fly height would be too high for stability (at the expense of capacity).

That's why you have smaller capacity (when you eliminate the most spacious outer ring of a circle), reduced seek latency, reduced rotational latency, and improved read write speed.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL

Some of the most reliable drives ever made were the old Seagate Cheatah drives, which, although they were SCSI, spun at 10,000RPM.

They were also lower capacity than their lower spindle speed Barracuda siblings, which were 7,200RPM but just as reliable.

Your point about heat is spot-on though. A quick look at how any server keeps the drives cool supports that.


And if I remember right these 10000rpm drives are all 2.5" in a heat sink that fit 3.5" slot. The head linear speed would be too high at the outer tracks at 10000rpm for reliability. The platter would not be rigid enough, and the fly height would be too high for stability (at the expense of capacity).

That's why you have smaller capacity (when you eliminate the most spacious outer ring of a circle), reduced seek latency, reduced rotational latency, and improved read write speed.



That is certainly possible, I have a few here actually, I could take one apart

The old Barracuda was a TALL drive, IIRC, they required a 5.25" height bay (for a 3.5" drive), I assume this was due to the sheer number of platters they held. I have one of those here too

 

[Colt45ws]

I believe the 10k rpm WD SATA drives are the same way. Just a 2.5" in a heatsink.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
I believe the 10k rpm WD SATA drives are the same way. Just a 2.5" in a heatsink.


They are.

 

[Nick R]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
I believe the 10k rpm WD SATA drives are the same way. Just a 2.5" in a heatsink.


They are.


Yeah but iirc the reason for that in the velociraptor drives is because 10k at 2.5" form factor provides much better arial density as well as lower access times. the raptors were normal 3.5" drives with 10k spindle speed.

 

[johnachak]

Do you remember how expensive SCSI drives were compared to the average drive?

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: johnachak
Do you remember how expensive SCSI drives were compared to the average drive?


Do I! LOL! I've got piles of them.