IBM Deskstar 75GXP DTLA-307075 76.8GB (2001)

What may be considered one of the rarest drives I own, a fully working 75GXP in 2022. The infamous Deathstar. This one is the unholy cocktail of potential failure and unreliability. For starters, it’s a 75GXP. I could end it there, but this is also a Hungarian model, which anecdotally seem a touch more unreliable ... Read More

Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 HDT722520DLA380 200GB (2006)

An old server drive of mine. These are exceedingly well built and have a particularly high standard of reliability, at least in my personal experiences with them. This was in the era of power supply manufacturers slowly switching to having SATA power connectors as standard, as opposed to simply molex. It was quite common to ... Read More

Seagate Barracuda ATA V ST3120023A 120GB (2002)

A classic Seagate design, which would continue to be developed upon with the 7200.7 and 7200.8 series. Drive Attributes ------------------------------------- Seagate Barracuda ATA V ST3120023A ------------------------------------- Capacity 120GB Mfc Date 2002-10-25 Interface PATA Platters 2 Heads 4 RPM 7200 Protocol Ultra DMA-5 ------------------------------------- This is most certainly one of the very last Seagate drives to ... Read More

ExcelStor Ganymede J680 80GB (2004)

ExcelStor have always been quite an interesting brand for me personally. I’ve had quite a few of their drives at this point and whilst my experiences with them have usually been quite positive, there’s always been a looming sense of doom whenever they’ve been in operation. This one is no exception, as it’s failing rather ... Read More

HGST Deskstar 7K1000.C HDS721010CLA330 1TB (2013)

HGST were my go-to for many years, up until they were completely dissolved into Western Digital. I purchased this drive brand new back in 2013 to use with my main rig. This was when the SSD/HDD combo was the norm. Of course, this is still fairly relevant today, but much less so in high end rigs. ... Read More

Seagate ST3283A 245MB (1993)

The Seagate ST3283A. A design demonstrating striking sophistication, while clearly reeking of high quality, something I wish modern Seagate drives kept up with. These drives use a solenoid to unlock the head stack, which is why you hear a loud thunk when the drive spins up. Drive Attributes ------------------------------------- Seagate ST3283A ------------------------------------- Capacity 245MB Mfc ... Read More

Toshiba N300 NAS HDWG440 4TB (2022)

The HDWG440 is built on Toshiba’s MG08-D drive architecture, a descendant born out of Toshiba’s acquisition of Fujitsu’s disk drive division in 2009. Of course, many points of innovation & iterative change have been made by Toshiba since, resulting in the types of drives we see from the company today (ignoring Hitachi-based HDA’s with the ... Read More