Hard Drives

Posts are shown from newest to oldest in order of release date. There’s no schedule here; each upload is spontaneous. Published posts are synchronised with a corresponding video release.

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

Conner Peripherals CP30104H 121MB (1992)

by BananaHDD
In 1992, Conner Peripherals were a big name in the industry. Arguably, Conner drives are some of the most ubiquitous models to find from machines dating back to this era, with their dominating position in the market. Many brands tried and failed to compete with Conner, a company which no longer exists today. This particular ... Read More

NEC D3713, D3746 & D3766 120MB-345MB (1994-1995)

by BananaHDD
The NEC D-Series of hard drives spanned from the late 80’s with their MFM/RLL-capable lineup of drives such as the D3122, to end with the HDA design of the D3724, being wildly altered compared to the models being demonstrated in this post. I’ve had quite a lot of experience with NEC drives from this period, ... Read More

Western Digital Caviar 31200 WDAC31200-08F 1281MB (1995)

by BananaHDD
The largest capacity drive of the classic black-cased Caviar’s, coming in at just over 1.2GB in size. These have a slightly different seek-test compared to the usual earlier Caviar’s, which makes them a little more interesting. Aside from that, they’re much the same. Even when these are covered in bad sectors, they still work quite ... Read More

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6V250F0 250GB (2006)

by BananaHDD
One of the last native Maxtor drive series to continue until their dissolution, fading away after being swept into Seagate. Unlike the DiamondMax Plus 9’s, the DiamondMax 10’s seemed to suffer much less from the poor reputation and reliability record Maxtor had at the time. Perhaps being a form of survivorship bias, the DiamondMax 10’s ... Read More

Toshiba MK232FC 43MB (1989)

by BananaHDD
Toshiba’s first IDE interface hard drive line began with these, the MK-232F/MK-233F/MK-234F series. As per my previous post on the Toshiba MK-234FC models, these seem to have a fairly consistent issue with surface adhesion (if looking at the 2 of 3 drives I have from this series). Fortunately, this MK-232FC works perfectly, so it can ... Read More

Fujitsu M2724TAM 1632MB (1997)

by BananaHDD
Released in Q1 1997, the M2724TAM was the largest drive Fujitsu made using this HDA-design, being the second iteration after the M2714TAM. Several other drives share this general design, capping out with 2 platters and 4 heads with this model. A rather nice looking design, when fully black-cased 2.5″ drives became much less commonplace. These ... Read More

NEC DSE1700A 1700MB (1996)

by BananaHDD
Released in mid-1996, NEC’s DSE series of hard drives were their second-last original in-house HDA design. By mid-1997, NEC had signed a deal with IBM to produce drives designed by IBM under both NEC and IBM branding. Meaning, this late-stage series of original NEC-designed drives only lasted for just over a single year in production. ... Read More

Toshiba P300 HDWD110 1TB (2018)

by BananaHDD
As my last post was on a rather rare vintage Toshiba MK-1034FC from 1992, I decided it would be fitting to look at a more modern Toshiba in comparison. In this case, it’s from 2018! The hard drive aficionados among you already know the deep history this drive design shares with Hitachi. Toshiba have kept ... Read More

Toshiba MK1034FC 106MB (1992)

by BananaHDD
The Toshiba MK-1034FC was released in mid-1991, but formally announced in late-1990. In fact, its initial conception was to compete with Conner Peripherals. Back at this time, Toshiba was a huge customer of Conner’s, so this wasn’t particularly great news for them. Particularly, this was an issue with portable computers, which has always been Toshiba’s ... Read More