I was cleaning my room and i found ...

X-Istence

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So, yes like the title said, for once i was cleaning my room and i came across some beatifull old hardware. Well, they are hard drives. Now, Most people by now will be asking WHY i would think that hard drives are so special, but i'll tell you why.

THEY ARE OLD! Yeah, I really mean old, check the pictures out:

IMG_3723_640.JPG


So, what we have are the following drives from left to right:

Western Digital WD93028-X - 1989 - 21 MB
Seagate ST351A/X - 1990 - 50 MB
Connner CP30251 (Seagate's) - 1992 - Size unknown
Quantum ProDrive LPS 52AT - 1990 - 50 MB
Western Digital 21000 - 1995 - 1 GB

The three middle ones still work, the other two do not. I have other old hard drives, but they are still in use in Tombstone, which is my 133 Mhz, 64 MB ram, FreeBSD test-bed. But more about that when it dies :p.

Here are some more pictures:

IMG_3724_640.JPG

IMG_3725_640.JPG

IMG_3726_640.JPG

IMG_3729_640.JPG


Origionals for better viewing can be found at http://personal.x-istence.com/gallery/index.php?album=HDs/ .
 
Wow, that 21MB is ancient, I actually saw this old hard drive a local steel factory used to use. If was like the size of 2 17inch monitors. Freakin enormous.
 
VenomXt said:
i have a bigfoot hardive still hehe.


That's quantum right? I used to have one of them, 6 GB's, but i gave it away, was unreliable in my situation.
 
Well, who bids less than 10 Megabites ?

I don´t have to clean my room, only to clear my hard-disk. And it works fine ! :)
 

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Old hard disks are always amusing, the size of them is oddly impressive :D
 
Oh yeah.

I have a bigfoot in the corner somewhere, and a few others, old HP-Quantum 7Gb SCSI, a couple 2Gb drives in a system that runds debian. I like to think of them as pieces of history, and weapons, you could throw one of those at someone and give them what for, and it would still work. Not the newer ones though.
 
Great pictures.

The funny thing is that back in 1989, 21 MB would have been a huge drive. It might even have been have been installed using one of those legacy numbers in the BIOS.
 
I used to work at a place that bought old hardware to reclaim the metals out of them. I am the cause of multiple old mainframes death, and about 8 winchester drives. They stopped doing that part of the business when I quit, and still have a partially disassembled drive there. I have been wanting to go and get one of the platters.

I agree Speedy, it is interesting, and makes me curious about them.
 
tom9042 said:
Great pictures.

The funny thing is that back in 1989, 21 MB would have been a huge drive. It might even have been have been installed using one of those legacy numbers in the BIOS.


Yup, indeed. You would need to set the BIOS to a special number. My uncle still has an old IBM from 1990, which contains this drive. It was the biggest drive avaiable at the time. I even remember when we had a 50 MB HD and we thought it was a lot. Back in the Dos 5 + win 3.1 days. We would not be able to fill the HD. It contained games, documents, but yet we only used 25 MB. Those were the days :p. Now i have over 113 Gb of crap stored all over the place :p
 
in 1989, 21 MB would have been a huge drive

The surprise, when I opened one of my older SEAGATE. Inside was an very simple mechanism. Addressing up to 40 MB only with two patterns *) and a stepper motor.


*) fresh patterns - reflecting the landscape
 

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Truly simple. Most newer disks inside are silver. Like a mirror. I took apart a 30Gb Maxtor, the difference between it and a 60Gb was a head on the other side of the disk itself and the BIOS.
 
oldest drive i own is a 7.5Gb Western Digital, which is being used in my bsd server. But those are somewhat impressive :)
 
leedogg said:
So who can find the hd with the SMALLEST capacity? :D


I used to have a HD of 800 Kb, but it was in a really bad state. I believe someone tried to angle grind it open. Can't remember the name and or company.
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
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Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

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