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.

Toshiba MK234FC 101MB (1989)

by BananaHDD
These aren’t drives you see everyday. The Toshiba MK-232FC & MK-234FC models (alongside their alternative interface counterparts) are some of Toshiba’s earliest voice-coil driven hard drives from the very late 80’s, being released in December of 1989. I purchased these in a lot from Yahoo Auctions out of Japan, alongside another 6 early Toshiba drives. ... Read More

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

by BananaHDD
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)

by BananaHDD
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)

by BananaHDD
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)

by BananaHDD
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)

by BananaHDD
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)

by BananaHDD
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)

by BananaHDD
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