What is the oldest hard drive you own?

By Ice_Blue
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Grand Master

Ice_Blue

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I was going through some stuff I had in boxes in my storeroom, and came across a Maxtor 300MB HDD.

Hooked it up to one of my PCs using an external IDE enclosure. Worked like a charm.

Windows for Workgroups booted up, but failed to load fully. General Protection Fault (GPF)

As an additional drive, however, nary a problem.

Remembered it from one of my custom builds, although I can't remember the year.

Amazing.

Grand Master

f0rk_b0mb

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I just turned 18 so I don't have anything quite as old as @Ice_Blue. :) I have a 1999 G4 Mac HDD. I think it's 20 GB which was HUGE back then. I got it from my Mom as a hand-me-down when she got an Intel mac. It's really what sparked my interest in computers. It still works too! Running OS X 10.4.11 Tiger. Wish I could upgrade it to Leopard, but it's only got a dual core 450 MHz processor.

Grand Master

Noir Angel

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Posted

Nothing really that old, the oldest I still have in active use is a 750GB Samsung drive that I purchased in 2007. I have a 200 GB Maxtor from 2005 but I no longer use it.

Grand Master

Max Norris

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Got a couple ye olde style 40MB MFM/RLL hard drives laying around from years gone by. They spin up at least.. don't exactly have any interface controllers about to test them with. (Or the desire.) No idea why I have them still aside from maybe propping open a window in the basement. In theory, my 5MB TRS-80 hard drive (all 5000 pounds of it) still works, circa ~1979 or so if I remember right. Don't laugh, 5MB was f'ing huge back then. Think I have a few DEC RA72's in storage somewhere from an old mini.

Still in active use, I do have several first generation Proliant ML370's with four 9.1GB SCSI drives in an array runng a couple database servers.. around 2001 I think or thereabouts. Meh, they do what they need to do, one of these days they need to be retired.

But that's pretty much it.. the rest of the systems use drives a couple years old at the oldest, most have been replaced a few months ago.

Grand Master

theyarecomingforyou

Posted
Posted

My oldest drive has a Power On Count of 24,462 hours / 1019 days. It's a 1TB Seagate and it's still going strong. In fact five of the seven drives in my system are Seagate and I've found them to be incredibly reliable.

In total I have 13.6TB of storage in my current system, though I'll probably replace the 1TB with a new 3TB when I upgrade to Windows 8.

Grand Master

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Posted
Posted

I've got an old seagate somewhere @home I'll post the specs of when I get there. I think it's a 32MB, but it's been so long since I've seen it I can't quite remember. I'll post the model number when I get back home, though. (it's really old, still works, and has windows 95 on it, that much I do know)

Okay, so I was close...it's only 43 whole megabytes....it's a Seagate ST-157A, and here's the specs: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/dta/SEA40_1/00000002.htm

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BobbyJobs

Posted
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i still have a working floppy.. an actually floppy disk one of them big bendy ones that works :D also have a 4gb HDD that works still its years old, could not say how old i have had it so long (it was second hand when i got it years ago, pulled it from an old broken pc).

Grand Master

theyarecomingforyou

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I've largely disposed of old hardware. The oldest hard drive I used to own belonged to an el-cheapo 486DX33 bought in June 1993. 162 MB Conner HDD.

Yeah, same. For instance, my last three or four motherboards haven't supported PATA so I had to ditch my older drives. The first hard-drive I had was a 20MB for an old 086 4.77MHz system.

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Grand Master

Max Norris

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i still have a working floppy.. an actually floppy disk one of them big bendy ones that works :D

Eesh I don't miss those.. nothing like a backup going bad just because one of the discs got near a magnetic field. But hey, being able to instantly double your storage capacity with a hole punch was nice ;D

Grand Master

ozgeek

Posted
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8.4 GB Seagate hard drive. This came with my first Windows 98 computer I bought back in 2000.

Guess what, I don't have the computer anymore but I still have the hard drive. Still works great. Last time I used it was as a source for Win7 install. What funny is I have a couple 8GB usb sticks that is much smaller than the hard drive, yet holds the same size. Incredible how fast technology has changed. We are on TBs of data. I remember one day on the old computer, I was eagerly wanting some more data so bought a retail packaged 40GB drive for $700 ! :wacko: . That was around 2001.

Proficient

deactivated_

Posted
Posted

Ah the memories.... I wished I had hung on to it for sentimental value, but I often talk about paying $1000 (in 1993 dollars too, what is that, like $10,000 now?) for my first 1 (yes one) Gb HDD, and then pull out the tiny tiny 8 Gb transflash chip out of my phone that I got for $15. Or compare to the four 2 Tb HDDs I got for my media center at ~$100 per.

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