Old Disc Drives - Historical IDE Hard Disk Drives

Synopsis

A historical IDE drive has a capacity in range 20 Mb up to 540 Mb. I particularly like those with stepper motors.

Conner CP-4021

This is probably one of the strangest IDE disk drives that I ever saw. And so might you! It is a non-standard laptop disk drive built by Conner Peripherals in 1989 (!) for COMPAQ LTE laptops (8086 CPU). I have just acquired two such laptops. One is equipped with the 8086 CPU and the other one with the 80286 CPU. Naturally, the older one has the Conner CP-4021 disk drive while the newer one has the older brother, CP-4041.

So we're talking about a hard disk drive manufactured in 1989 with a 20 Mb storage capacity and an atypical form factor: 3.5" but both slimmer and shorter than a standard desktop disk drive. Without opening it (which I don't intend anyway), I can say it has only one platter; it is very slim. I have to admit: I had a lot of disk drives, more than a hundred different models, but I never had such piece of machinery. Heck, I didn't even knew they existed in such form factor and size. Notice the slightly machined aluminum cover in the lower right corner. This is probably to allow for tight packing inside the small (by the day's standards) laptop. Also, if you're used to BIOS fixed disk types then you have to know this one is TYPE 2.

When I got the old COMPAQ LTE laptop, the drive was in good working condition. It makes a faint, interesting squeaking noise while seeking. This leads me to presume it's a voice coil. The spindle motor sounds OK, background buzzing. But the miracle didn't lasted for too long. Unfortunately as soon as I started looking through the stored data, I began encountering random read data integrity errors. Strangely enough, it booted correctly though. In total I think I have spent close to an hour playing around with the laptop then turned it off for the night sleep. Next day in the morning, while trying to boot, I got directly a data integrity error while loading MS-DOS 3.31. Now this was not a good sign. The disk probably developed a bad sector where the loader and/or COMMAND.COM is stored.

At this point I extracted the disk drive from the laptop to add it to the collection. PS: The laptop received a 32 Mb compact flash card with matching CF-IDE adapter. I just had to deal with the strange IDE interface connector on the Conner drive. Read on for the solution.

I didn't knew Conner had the means to build logical integrated circuits. But maybe they used re-branded parts. I also like the big green LED. Just take a look at the big array of IRF transistors! This disk drive is some top of the range miniature technology for those days! It is powered at only 5 V. There are a lot of parts on the logical PCB. Almost of them are SMD. I had a whole other (bad) impression regarding Conner Peripherals and their products. But this one amazes me!

Another interesting fact is that the EPROM containing the drive firmware is socketed in a PLCC socket. This is rather unusual for disk drives. It must've been very expensive back then and probably with different firmwares you could have the same unit with two different capacities. But this is something I cannot be sure about. And we'll never find out, unfortunately. Information regarding this drive on the Internet is close to none.

If you take a look at the IDE interface connector, and you are very familiar with IDE itself, then you will quickly figure out that this is just a scaled down standard IDE connector with four additional pins for power. Yes that's all. So if you're like me, go ahead and build your own adapters. I have built an adapter for the compact flash card and I'm going to build another adapter for this disk drive in order to connect it directly to the IDE bus of a desktop computer. It will be very nice to see it working as slave drive, even with bad sectors. This is a rare piece indeed. Worth keeping, that's for sure.

Later Edit: I just noticed that changing the batteries (yes, the standard D-type tubular cells) of the laptop, provided enough current for the drive to operate correctly! Incredible. Both drives are running perfectly. Unfortunately I sold both laptops while not keeping any unit for references.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 21.6 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 1
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 2,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.600 rpm
INTERFACE: proprietary AT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 39 ms

Fujitsu M2681TAM

I got this little known disk drive from a friend back in 2014. It was a donation as he knew my passion for collecting old storage artifacts. I knew I had nothing to do with it but take a picture, test if it works, perform some stress testing in order to ensure zero bad sector, and donate it further. I am not a fan of Fujitsu disks and since my storage space is claimed by other stuff, this one had to go.

But anyway, I tested it on an Intel 486DX4 / 100 MHz based computer. Performed a full unrecoverable format and installed MS-DOS 6.22 and copied some old games that I knew would stress the drive a little. Remember Duke Nukem 3D? It was fun to replay some levels.

At 4.500 rpm this is a strange beast. Most hard disk drives back in the era were 3.600 rpm devices. While the 14 ms average access time is good, it is easily surpassed by the Western Digital siblings. It has only three heads which means one side of one platter is not covered with oxide. Or so I think. I had not opened it up as I didn't want to break a perfectly working drive. However it might have three useful heads and one used for servo tracks. I don't know about this but the drive appears to be sturdy and reliable.

The squeaky seeking noises resemble those of the old Conner drives. But the Fujitsu seeks much faster so the squeaking is different. If you don't pay attention you don't hear it.

I donated this hard disk drive to someone else interested in building vintage PCs and playing old MS-DOS games. I hope it will serve him good.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 264 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 4.500 rpm
INTERFACE: ATA-2 (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 14 ms

Maxtor 7120AT

This is a very good drive. All my respects go to Maxtor and their 7120AT model of drives. I wanted to obtain this unit from close friend, for my Kenitec 386 computer, back in 1996. I have traded a Quantum ProDrive LP-52s 50 Mb drive and a Seagate ST-351A/X 40 Mb drive for the 7120AT. It is a very fast unit considering the production year (1993) and the technology available back then. I used it with success on the Kenitec 386 computer, with Microsoft Windows 95. Upgrading to a 486, when playing games, especially Doom and Doom 2, the drive was very fast and I had to wait half the time I was waiting with the Seagate ST-157A until the game loaded.

I managed to easily open the drive top cover just because Maxtor used standard regular bolts. So that I could unscrew them with my regular screwdriver. What I found, as you can clearly see in the picture, is that this drive has two platters and in consequence 4 read/write heads. Notice how beautiful is the drive assembly (HDA), but also observe that the discs spin backwards if we compare with the Seagate models presented above. Take a look at the Seagate ST-157A for example, the actuator is oriented to the right but in the 7120AT drives from Maxtor, the actuator is oriented to the left. Interesting and beautiful.

This was the drive used to be seen in most 386 based computers of 1993 or 1994 when 4 Mb of RAM was enough to complete tasks required by Microsoft Windows 3.1 and the MS-DOS operating system. Remember the 512K video cards that were installed in the top line bulletproof 386 / 33 MHz computers? Yes, that's the full picture.

Note: My Kenitec 386 computer is running at 25 MHz (it's an 80386SX manufactured by AMD, of course) and has 4 Mb RAM.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 129.5 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.524 rpm
INTERFACE: AT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 15 ms

Seagate ST-157A

This hard disk drive is one of the best units based on stepper motors. It was fast and large enough to store Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS 6.22. Of course, a few games and applications were also found on those three platters. I found this drive very useful as it may became master/slave with a simple jumper switch and it could support the weird BIOS program used to enter information in my aging 286 based computer CMOS. Well, initially, this computer was not equipped with an IDE disk drive but with a SCSI one and therefore there was a SCSI controller present in it. So I had to replace it with an IDE controller and then run a BIOS program of about 19K from a floppy disk to enter the parameters of the Seagate ST-157A. From the drives I had, this is the only one that ever worked on that computer.

These drives are very reliable and reasonably fast. I pulled one of them out from a 386 machine about four years ago (2000) and I could still access it after gently knocking it a few times with a screwdriver. As I guessed, when I removed the cover, I saw that the heads were stuck on the platters because there were some trails. Anyway I still have it and it is in working condition even though I take it from the hard disk drives box and start it from time to time to ensure the heads will not stick together with the platters again.

The disk drive may be recognized easily due to its almost-yellow color. Also it is quite big half-height 3.5" format. But that's not what matters. Also, a note engraved on the top cover says: "DO NOT APPLY PRESSURE TO TOP COVER".

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 44.7 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: STEPPER MOTOR
DISCS: 3
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 2,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.600 rpm
INTERFACE: AT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 28 ms

Seagate ST-351A/X

I used one of these hard disk drives in the early 1993 with a 25 MHz 386 based computer. I was surprised by the speed of the Seagate ST-351A/X and I really liked the noise that the stepper motor was making while reading and writing to the drive. It is unforgettable.

I further learned that the 40 Mb ST-351A/X was the last of the 40 Mb class drives ever made and it included some stunning technologies like only one high-density magnetic platter, SMD parts, and so on. But the presence of the stepper motor was quite an oddity for the technology available in that disk drive.

For me, it is the leader of all the 40 Mb disk drives using stepper motors. It worked fine with my self-designed operating system (OS/MC) until a few weeks ago when I made a wrong combination of the master/slave jumpers. I still think I was not paying attention and blew it up. It is spinning but after a short seek command, the drive stops responding and the LED keeps blinking. I searched the Internet and the blink codes represent "ERROR UPLOADING RAM". Whatever this means... As a general advice, if you are dealing with this kind of disk drives, please bear in mind that mistaking the jumpers configuration (i.e.: enable master and slave at the same time) blows up the disk drive electronics. So, please consult the jumper configuration table on the official Seagate documentation which you can find by issuing a search on the official www.seagate.com Internet site.

Anyway, this disk drive is unique because with a simple switch of jumpers, you may force the drive to work in XT systems (8-bit) or in AT systems (16-bit). Check out the front flexible wires that connect the heads to the logic board. Left of them is the green transparent LED.

The disk drive is well constructed, enclosed in a beautiful black cover with quite a great shape as you can see in the picture. It is not as light as Quantum's models of the era, but I was always attracted by heavy disk drives. My favorite big and heavy disk is the Seagate ST-4766NV.

I ended up purchasing a similar working disk from a friend, back in 2004. The one in the picture above is the defect one. Notice in the picture the way the actuator is linked to the stepper motor; weird but it has proved its reliability. In the picture below, the one in the right is the defect drive. I have kept it after all these years. I don't know why, but I cannot dispose of it. Yet.

Later Edit: The year 2016 finds myself owning five of these nice hard disk drives. Whenever I found them on the local flea market, I bought them. I don't know what to do with them for the moment, but it seems like fun collecting them. Oh how I wished I had these in 1994. Anyway, if you want to read a short story about this disk, please go to Article #67 on my Personal Weblog.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 42.82 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: STEPPER MOTOR
DISCS: 1
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 2,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.048 rpm
INTERFACE: AT/XT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 28 ms

Seagate ST-3120A

This is a typical Seagate disk drive from the early 1990s, reasonably fast -- 32K cache present -- and roomy compared to the stepper or early voice coil siblings of the era. It has an unusual spindle motor speed and only three heads which leads me into thinking that one side of one of the platters is either not used or used as servo tracks.

Other than the fact this is a transitional drive, I don't have much to tell about it. What do I mean? Simple. Back then, the transition between stepper motor and voice coil drives was just happening. Old generation hard disk drives based on stepper motors, deemed as complicated and slow, were left behind, making space for the newer generation voice coil devices.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 107 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 2,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.211 rpm
INTERFACE: AT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 15 ms

Seagate ST-3144A

This appears to be a sturdy drive built around 1992. As you can see from the characteristics sheet below, the rotation speed is weird. Just like that of its smaller brother, the ST-3120A. In those days, a 3.600 rpm rotation speed was more common than this. This disk drive is equipped with 32K cache memory.

I played a little with this drive and it appears to be rock solid. I don't particularly like the noise the spindle motor makes while in operation. But the actuator seeking noise is quite pleasant. If it were for 1992-1993 again, I would be more than happy to have such disk in my computer. But in those years, I had a 40 Mb hard disk drive. So this must have been a premium for home users. These days, I cannot find any use for such a drive and as I have other favorite units filling up my storage space, this little one had to go.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 130 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 2,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.211 rpm
INTERFACE: AT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 16 ms

Seagate ST-3660A

I know almost nothing about this drive. I could start it only two times since I bought it from a bazaar and found it was not badly damaged, in fact Scandisk found no errors on it's platters. I mention that the drive drive started the first time I brought it home and the next start was after, let's say, about ten times of powering on and off the 486 machine on which I tested the thing. Now, the disk drive is in the same condition: it spins up, rests like this for a couple of seconds (while I can hear it's actuator moving) and then powers back off.

I heard that this drive was used in mass in 1994-1995 as well as new or second hand. In my opinion, it must have been reliable and fast, as shows the chart below.

As you can see in the picture, it is a 3.5" disk drive with weird hexagonal bolts -- that's why I was not able to remove it's top cover to take a picture of the interior. At the moment I didn't had a torx screwdriver. I don't like the way Seagate constructed this drive. To me it looks ugly, although some of my friends told me that it's a beautiful piece of technology and it looks quite well. But I found it incomparable with it's elder brother, the Seagate ST-351A/X.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 545.5 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.811 rpm
INTERFACE: ATA-2 (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 14 ms

Seagate ST-31082A

Here we are in 2014 and I received this drive from a friend, one night. I immediately recognized the Medalist series of drives. I had to deal with them in the past. They proved their reliability so I accepted to take it with me. If I won't be able to any PC to install it into, I'll just take a picture of it for posterity. As with all old drives that I receive, I'm curious what is stored on it. Unfortunately I don't have the required time available to check. However, I will surely update this page when I'll have the chance.

This drive is also a Compaq spare part which leads me into thinking it was designed to be factory fitted in some particular Compaq computer.

Now what should I do with it? For obvious reasons, I cannot sell it because nobody would want it. The late 1990s are over! I can't donate it either, because it can't be used anymore due to its low capacity by today's standards. I don't particularly like it to justify keeping it along. Time will decide it's fate. I'd like to trade it for other oldies but we'll see.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 1.08 Gb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 4.500 rpm
INTERFACE: ATA-3 (IDE mode 4)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 12.5 ms

Seagate ST-31276A

I have extracted this drive from a Compaq Pentium 133 MHz based computer. At the time I used this hard disk drive with the HI-NET Server running Microsoft Windows 2000 and related free domain server software. It was good but a little too small to hold the entire operating system with the page file and the software. What I noticed was the infernal noise this disk drive emitted while moving the actuator.

This drive found its place in the system from where I have extracted the Western Digital Caviar 1270.

This Seagate disk drive remembers me about the old Conner Peripherals drives. As you know, Conner was founded by an ex-Seagate engineer that founded its own disk drive factory. That's why it's called Conner. I like the way this drive is constructed and I also like that Seagate attached the jumper configuration. This way it's easier to know how to set the drive to work for your needs. Western Digital adopted a very fine way to set the jumpers of their Caviar disk drives. Today, all CD-ROM makers adopted the same strategy.

This disk drive is from the Medalist series, that include fast models but produced relatively high noise levels, especially while seeking.

Finally, HI-NET Server got another drive, the Seagate ST-32122A.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 1.28 Gb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 4.500 rpm
INTERFACE: ATA-3 (IDE mode 4)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 12.5 ms

Seagate ST-32122A

This is the second disk that I have fitted to the HI-NET Server. It belonged to a Compaq computer based on a 233 MHz Pentium processor, the same processor that is installed in the machine that runs the HI-NET Server. The picture below shows this drive with some Compaq affixed stickers suggesting OEM equipment that include the warranty notice and the the so-called Compaq spare part number.

This is another disk drive that resembles its Conner cousins but it seems a little bit more refined. It is from the same Medalist series of solid drives with relatively good performance. This particular drive makes half the infernal noise its elder brother, the Seagate ST-31276A produces while seeking.

Now we are in September 2004 and the HI-NET Server still runs on this disk drive. I have nothing to worry about as it'll still run like this for a long time as Seagate drives have proven their reliability over the time. Later Edit: In 2008 the HI-NET Server moved to dedicated server equipment and this drive was retired for good. The server eventually became AGNET Server.

In the picture, you can see the jumper configuration table. Good job. I like drives that don't force you to read the manual in order to learn how to set them right.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 2.12 Gb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 4.500 rpm
INTERFACE: ATA-3 (IDE mode 4)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 12 ms

Quantum ProDrive ELS 170AT

This 170 Mb Quantum hard disk drive is reasonably fast and well built. I am currently using it for developing the OS/MC operating system. I have extracted it from a Compaq computer based on a 486SX / 33 MHz processor. Besides the ProDrive ELS inscription, there is no model number engraved on the disk drive so I did a little Internet research and found out it's complete model name and number.

The disk drive is finished quite well in a nice aluminum case as Quantum did with most of the drives from 1990 to 1994. This is a typical Quantum disk drive of the era.

There is not much to say about this drive. It is fast and reliable and I would recommend it to any 386 user. It can cope with Microsoft Windows 95 although you will quickly run out of space. Better use it with Microsoft Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS 6.22.

Later Edit: Back in 2015, I have received another one of these. I cannot remember how, but I found it in a parts box donated by a friend. I cleaned it and further donated it. Apparently these used to be common back in the days. My critical eye cannot but spot the electrolytic capacitors next to the power connector. Hmm. While other drives back then used solid tantalum capacitors, this Quantum drive was stuck with standard electrolytic counterparts. I can already smell problems.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 170.3 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.605 rpm
INTERFACE: AT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 15 ms

Western Digital Caviar 1210

In the winter of the year 2000 I have bought an old but weird Compaq 386SX / 20 MHz laptop computer from an antiquity shop. It was in good working order and it was unbelievably fast for an 80386SX CPU running at 20MHz. Back in late 2001, the big laptop was dead. The internal switching mode power supply died. I opened it up to salvage the programming work from the hard disk drive. Guess what was inside? The 3.5" half height Western Digital Caviar 1210 disk drive. I was surprised because I knew that laptops were fitted with laptop form factor hard disk drives and not with normal desktop class units.

This particular Western Digital drive is relatively fast and is surely one of the best 210 Mb drives ever made. This is the smaller brother of the Western Digital Caviar 2420. Both units have 128K of cache memory that made them surprisingly fast for the period.

Nowadays, I'm using this drive to boot from it when I need to access another disk drive in a computer without actually booting from it. It helped me a lot when I set up a school network, for instance. The problem with it is that at some point in my experiments in 2005 or so, I overwritten the boot sector with something custom which somehow destroyed it's ability to boot correctly even after issuing the SYS C: and the FDISK /MBR commands in MS-DOS.

Like all Western Digital drives, this one has a colored stripe above the model number. This time it is blue. You can see in the picture a small orange LED. It is not original, I have mounted it to monitor the activity of this disk drive. Not that it was really needed because you can clearly notice when the drive is working due to it's soft sound that the actuator makes while seeking. In fact, Western Digital mounted a small LED connector on every Caviar model of the era. You just need to plug a 2.7 V to 3.1 V LED and it will light when the drive is in use.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 212.6 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 1
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.314 rpm
INTERFACE: AT (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 13 ms

Western Digital Caviar 1270

This is a wonderful little known hard disk drive. For me at least. I never saw them before. I pulled this particular model out of a working machine in March 2004. Someone came to me and said: Please try to do something with this machine! It has a 270 Mb disk and I don't have enough space even for Windows 95 and my Office suite. So I fitted that Pentium 75 MHz based machine with a nice 1.28 Gb Seagate ST-31276A drive and that person went home happy.

I didn't knew Western Digital produced such odd sized disk drives. And the aluminum machined enclosure is not familiar for Western Digital drives of that era. Take a look at the Western Digital Caviar 1210 above and see how the case is constructed. That layout was spread throughout the entire Caviar series, starting with the beautiful Western Digital Caviar 140 40 Mb drive. Western Digital used a yellow stripe on this disk drive. As a matter of fact, all Caviars had a color stripe above the model number. Also, if you look below the Western Digital inscription, you can clearly see that this hard disk drive was manufactured for IBM. OEM equipment, that is. In the past other disk drive manufacturers produced drives for IBM. These days, IBM itself produces them. Later edit: As we are in 2014, IBM is long gone out of the hard disk drive manufacturing business.

As always, the LED you see in the picture is not original. I fitted the drive with a shiny red LED from a broken MiniScribe 8425 MFM unit. Although it makes the Western Digital characteristic sound when it moves the actuator to read or write to the platters, I wanted to see when the drive is operating.

This unit has 64K cache which largely improves performance. It ran fine with Windows 95 OSR 2 and an Intel 486DX4 / 100 MHz fitted with 24 Mb RAM for my cousin. One day, in August 2004, I have configured a school network and I replaced a faulty drive with this one. I gave my cousin the match for the Caviar 1210. I'm talking about a beautiful 420 Mb Western Digital Caviar 2420. This is a typical WD disc: fast and reliable.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 270.4 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 1
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 4.500 rpm
INTERFACE: ATA-2 (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 11 ms

Western Digital Caviar 2340

When I had this brand new 341 Mb hard disk drive back in late 1995 or early 1996, I was very happy. A whooping storage improvement over what I had before. I have traded the Maxtor 7120AT disk and some extra money for the Caviar 2340. Those were hard times, money was difficult to get and we, the first generation interested into modern computing, used to exchange parts between us a lot.

While this unit had 32K cache, it seemed to perform well. In time, I got another one so I boosted the storage of the 386SX / 25 MHz machine to about 700 Mb. Those were also good times. I have not had any problems with them during the few years I daily abused them.

I don't remember exactly how I parted with them but I did so around the year 2000. Then, back in 2015, I found a pair of Caviar 2340 drives on the local flea market. What a coincidence... a pair! I got them for about 2 E. That is close to nothing that I paid for them when they were in their youth. At home I photographed them for eternity and performed an unrecoverable format and installed MS-DOS 6.22. After playing a little bit with them, I donated both to some other collector. I had to admit, when I saw the pair, it brought back memories. Could it be that... no, it couldn't.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 341 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.322 rpm
INTERFACE: ATA-2 (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 13 ms

Western Digital Caviar 2420

I have extracted this wonderful hard disk drive from an AT&T computer in August 2004. This is the larger brother of the Western Digital Caviar 1210. This model also has 128K of cache memory which makes it really fast. In practice it seemed they were always faster than their competitors in the same capacity range. This model does its job well on an 486DX4 / 100 MHz processor based computer running Microsoft Windows 98 and Microsoft Office 97. It is indeed a perfect match for a 486 CPU based computer.

This drive continues the Western Digital tradition and has a purple stripe above the model number. I have added a small green LED to this model. I like to give each one of my disk drives their own personality so I am installing a different color LED into each Caviar model that passes through my hands. This is just one of my marks.

While moving the actuator, this disk drive makes the same sound like is smaller 212 Mb brother. In fact, this is the exact same drive but with two platters instead of only one. In consequence it has double the size. Naturally, this drive has four read/write heads.

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture with this unit. If I would ever get my hands on one of these, I will take a picture of it. This is a promise.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 425.3 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 3.314 rpm
INTERFACE: AT (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 13 ms

Western Digital Caviar 2540

This is a 540 Mb hard disk drive, a typical Caviar unit, fast and reliable. One of the good ones. Now I am using it in a bulletproof system for Office use. The system is equipped with an AMD K6-II / 500 MHz processor and 128 Mb of PC133 SDRAM. The computer is completed by an ATI Rage IIc video card with 8 Mb of SGRAM, a very good option when doing a lot of work in 2D mode. I decided that a large drive just would not be necessary if the system runs just Microsoft Windows 98 and Microsoft Office 97. Furthermore, the computer is part of a home network. So all the sensitive data is stored on a network server that has redundant storage array. Yes, it's the year 2004.

Note: Originally, this computer had a 40 Gb Maxtor disk drive which I have since moved on my Athlon XP 1800+ based machine. The next step was adding a SCSI interface and a huge 5.25" full height Seagate ST-4766NV 630 Mb SCSI drive. It made a lot of heat and noise and I gave up using this solution in favor of the Caviar 2540 drive.

Interestingly enough, this hard disk drive has only 64K cache while some of its elder siblings had 128K. That's strange!

Take a look at the picture now. The first thing you see is the bare aluminum enclosure color. From the past, we have learned that all Caviars were painted anodized black at the exterior. Only at the interior they had different number of platters and heads thus different capacities. This drive is built in a similar enclosure as the other Caviar models but the cover resembles more to the Western Digital Caviar 1270. From now on, all Caviar drives will share variations of this enclosure. Western Digital kept the tradition of striping their drives. This one has an orange patch.

I would probably think this drive is the older brother of the Caviar 1270 but they just don't look the same. Or do they? The Caviar 1270 has one 270 Mb platter and the Caviar 2540 has two 270 Mb platters. This was a common industry practice. And still is.

TECHNICAL DATA

CAPACITY: 540.8 Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 1,7 (ZBR)
SPINDLE SPEED: 4.500 rpm
INTERFACE: ATA-2 (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 11 ms

Thank you for spending your time reading these old pages.