hard drives What is the oldest hard drive you own?

[Ice_Blue]

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.

[f0rk_b0mb]

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.

[_neutrino Veteran]

I had one just die a few weeks ago that had an ontime (lifetime ontime not all at once) of over 1000 days.

[Noir Angel]

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.

[SoCalRox]

I have a couple of old MFM drives from the 80s. As far as I know, they work, but it's been a couple of years since I booted the machines.

I have others from 12 or 13 years back that are working.

[Max Norris]

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.

[Dot Matrix]

The oldest id from 2007. All SATA. I destroyed my last remaining PATA/IDE drive almost 5 years ago now.

[The Dark Knight]

80GB laptop HDD from 2005. Still in use with an external casing. :)

[darth_vader]

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120 GB, 2004, still running :D.

[theyarecomingforyou]

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.

[shockz]

Some really old thing in an IBM 286, 16 or 32MB i think. Still works too. Only turn it on once in a blue moon though. Think the last time it was on was 2011. Fun for nostalgic value... has all sorts of old games and such stored on it.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

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.

[Haggis Veteran]

Maxtor 80gb Diamond max plus

Manufactured 23 August 2003

still use it as an external drive

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

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

[Phouchg]

Had a ten-gig Quantum Fireball, but parted with it some months ago. Now it must be one 40-gig WD, still working like a charm. There's a stripped screw, so I can't be arsed to get mfg date.

Oh well, I'm not that ubercool/old :(

[BobbyJobs]

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).

[theyarecomingforyou]

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.

[Max Norris]

Quote

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

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

[-Himanshu-]

A 40 GB drive that came when I bought my first computer. It is PATA and I don't use it anymore as the my motherboard has only SATA ports.

[Rigby]

I have a 5 MB full height hard drive from an IBM PC/XT clone and a 20 MB IBM SCSI drive. Both still work perfectly with no bad sectors.

[Ryoken]

I have a 1GB Hitachi that came with my first computer in 1996 that I still use on my Cyrx 233 "gaming rig" [ for DOS, and Windows 9x games that don't work in compatibility mode ]

[DocM]

16g Maxtor that's in a Linux file server as /tmp

[Nick H. Supervisor]

16GB HDD from 1999. Man, I remember thinking how huge that was...

Oh, and floppy disks FTW! I miss the days of playing Knights of the Sky.

[ozgeek]

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.

[deactivated_]

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.