BananaHDD

Western Digital Caviar 1170 WDAC1170-00F 170MB (1993)

by BananaHDD
By the mid-90’s, Western Digital had gained a few years of experience building hard disk drives, after their acquisition of Tandon in late-1987. The Caviar 1170 was an example of these sleek new designs, among a number of other larger Caviar models. With a 3 year warranty, alongside incredibly respectable benchmark results, the Caviar series ... Read More

Toshiba MK1002TSKB 1TB (2012)

by BananaHDD
Shortly after Toshiba’s acquisition of Fujitsu, their presence in the 3.5″ hard drive market would begin to blossom. The MK1002TSKB is an enterprise-class drive from Toshiba, released and announced in the first quarter of 2011. This model would hang around for only a little while, being phased out in early 2013. Compared to current Toshiba ... Read More

Western Digital Caviar Lite 170 WDAL2170-00 170MB (1994)

by BananaHDD
The Caviar Lite’s certainly weren’t Western Digital’s first 2.5″ drives, but they are among some of the earliest. Western Digital were facing stiff competition during the early-mid 90’s when concerning 2.5″ drives, leading to almost no further 2.5″ industry developments until the early 2000’s, with the company focusing on enterprise-grade models instead. Toshiba, Conner Peripherals, ... Read More

Seagate Video 2.5 HDD ST500VT000 500GB (2015)

by BananaHDD
An evolution of the Momentus Thin line, the ST500VT000 is a single platter, 500GB, 7mm, 2.5″ model from Seagate’s “Video 2.5 HDD” line-up. These were presumably some of the last drives made to be used in Xbox 360’s, seeing as this one comes from a late-model E variant. Usually, 360’s hold standalone Momentus drives (or ... Read More

Conner Peripherals CFA340A 340MB (1994)

by BananaHDD
Conner Peripherals had a consistent drive design, which would later become infamous in computing history. This drive is one such example, the lowly CFA340A. In Conner’s conquest of cost-cutting drive production and flooding the market with affordable drives, many models share this identical design, with only density and platter count differences. While these drives were ... Read More

Fujitsu G1 AV MEA3320BT 320GB (2008)

by BananaHDD
This post was updated on 2023-03-08, per further analysis. Released in mid-late 2008, the MEA3320BT was Fujitsu’s re-entry into the AV space, after famously exiting from the general 3.5″ consumer market in the very early 2000’s. While these drives weren’t available for retail purchase, they were relatively widespread in AV equipment (especially from Panasonic), however ... Read More

Toshiba MK2720FC 1358MB (1996)

by BananaHDD
In April 1995, Toshiba released the largest (in capacity) 2.5″ drive in the world: the MK2720FC. Housing 5 platters, 10 heads and reigning in at a whopping 19mm in height, these drives are quite the beastly 2.5″ models. As a result of this rather large head-stack mass for a 2.5″ form factor, these are reasonably ... Read More

Samsung SpinPoint PL40 SP0411N 40GB (2003)

by BananaHDD
Released in mid-late 2003, the SpinPoint PL40 was one of the defining members of the slimline lineup Samsung had at the time. In what seemed like a mini-trend in the industry, several manufacturers flocked to building super slim 3.5″ desktop drives, for one reason or another. Notably, Maxtor and Seagate would be two members demonstrating ... Read More

IBM Deskstar DJAA-31700 1700MB (1996)

by BananaHDD
A very early Deskstar model, the DJAA-31700 was the largest capacity in this particular series. This series was available in both 1700MB (DJAA-31700) and 1270MB (DJAA-31270) capacities, being a rock solid choice in 1996. This particular drive came from an old Macintosh, clearly labelled with Apple’s “special” firmware addition. Fortunately, it’s still perfectly usable in ... Read More

Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 HDP725016GLA380 160GB (2010)

by BananaHDD
The Deskstar P7K500 was released alongside the CinemaStar P7K500 in October 2007. The lowly HDP725016GLA380 was the smallest capacity available at only 160GB, with this particular model being a Deskstar variant. According to the datasheet provided by Hitachi, these fall under the Gemini family of drive designs, which is fortunately hinted at on the drive ... Read More