30 yr old Hard Drives : Quantum Edition

[@arnlol]

Interesting how the older ones haven’t succumbed to the disintegrating rubber yet. I’m surprised that most of the fireballs had issues, especially the "original" ones which are pretty decent drives (and these don’t have the rubber problems that plague the older units). I’m looking forward to the next installment in this series :)

[@senilyDeluxe]

One of my 52 MB Quantums just started doing that. The weird thing about it was how the BIOS reacted - throwing high pitched beeps every ten seconds or so and I don't even know if it ever threw a HDD error, so it took me way too long to find it. And yeah, the rubber head stop just got oily enough to not easily let go of the head arm. The drive is up and running again.

[@theaustralianconundrum]

Subscribed from Australia. As an Apple Macintosh fanboy since 1984 I have only ever known 50 pin SCSI HDD's and they were always very expensive even without the Apple sticker on them. I now collect BNIB(static bag) SCSI HDD's as they fetch crazy money from collectors of drives with zero hours use. Even used ones are fetching around US$1,000.00 each if working tested and US$500.00 if not working. That said I only collect MINT physical condition drives for showcase displays. I keep all of mine in original static bags and boxes and the used ones are kept in HDD clear cases for MY collection that I don't sell. It's a wonderful hobby and I love them. You have a very good channel with excellent video quality, sounds and production and narration to pro standard.

[@catriona_drummond]

4 out of 10 is a good quota considering it's Quantum.

[@azzajohnson2123]

Miss your regular content. What happened ?

[@retrozmachine1189]

I had a LPS105 back then, had it for years. It didn't fail, just outlived it's usefulness in relation to capacity. I think I had OS/2 on it towards the end.

[@theSoundCarddatabase]

I remember how my first hard drive sounded when booting up, but never took note of what brand/model it was. Hearing it now, it was definitely a Quantum 540AT and it would fit the drive capacity I remember (512MB) from the early 90s.

[@va4cqd]

this pretty much matches my experience with this era of quantum hard drives

[@---777---]

6:06 aww yiss, classic quantum howl

[@justsumguy2u]

Interesting vid, and fun as well; thanks

[@HAVOCprojects]

The oldest working HDD I still have in my possession is a 3GB Quantum Fireball drive from my brother's earlier PC in the late 90's. I haven't re-checked the drive for a while, but I remembered it still functioning properly as my secondary backup storage. If Quantum's drives are known for going faulty rather easily, my brother must have been lucky to get a good unit out of them. My brother also used to have one of their Bigfoot drives, but I don't know what happened to it after further upgrades & respecs on his PC.

[@kamsyed4450]

In the late 90s in Asia I had HDD name Conner in my 486, it performed the same as top dogs at the time, Seagate & Western Digital

[@sebastian19745]

I received from a friend, long time ago, an IBM branded Quantum 520M or 540M. I installed it on my 486, did autodetect and it worked ok. However, it kept hanging for a while when finished scandisk or when formatting and giving an error about last sector and LBA configuration. After an LLF, I initialize the HDD, partitioned and it worked well, without complaining. I guess it was used on a system with CHS geometry and when I used it with LBA, it got confused and throwed errors. Anyway, that was my only Quantum HDD.

[@the_holy_forestfairy]

You are missing a very special Quantum HD: The Classic and Legendary BIGFOOT! (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bigfoot) 😁😁😁😁

[@mauzzz2418]

exactly what i was thinking.

[@gilbert1975nf]

Oh! I miss that one too! Dealt a lot with the 4G Quantum Bigfoot!

[@the_kombinator]

They're garbage though. They started failing in the 90s. I had one 4.3 gb that actually worked, and it's in a retro PC right now but those will fail randomly and for no reason and with no warning.

[@SudburyMan]

I have a bigfoot that has been kept in antistatic hard drive pouch for many many years as I knew it would be special one day :)

[@the_kombinator]

@@SudburyMan I had 4 last year, one survived. One is in my hard drive display carousel - it spins up, but that's it

[@miked4377]

where are you...???? you ok?

[@StoianAtanasov]

Cmon, open up those broken drives to see why they failed!

[@aspinx]

+1 for opening video!

[@KonuralpBalcik]

I lovet it Conner Chinook . maybe the best of those dates

[@senilyDeluxe]

I remember doing lots of dumpster diving in the late 90s, also getting lots of 1GB Quantum Fireball drives every now and again (1GB was like Fairyland to me back then...), but they all would emit white noise on initialization and were just all guaranteed bad. I also have three Quantum Bigfoots - they suck. One has tons of bad sectors, the other two work fine, but yes, they're slow. My oldest Quantums are two 52MB drives. The rubber bump stop just started turning into oil and not letting go of the read head. Caught it quick because one's in a machine I use quite often (Commodore PC40-III). Btw. these are noisy as hell - and instead of control tracks have a slotted slide attached to the read head that passes through an opto which then counts what track the heads are at. That also probably explains the weird capacity - usually voice coil HDDs have to sacrifice an entire head or later on just some capacity to a control track just so the electronics know where the heads are at. Stepper motor drives didn't have that problem, but man were they slow. (btw. Retrospector78, if you're reading this, you oughta check your spam more often... :-) )

[@aleksandardjurovic9203]

Thank you!

[@maxtornogood]

A few haven't held up so well but nice to hear the sounds nevertheless!

[@thedopplereffect00]

It's crazy that entire pile of hard drives has less storage than a micro SD card in a phone.

[@oonflea]

My second computer had a SAF quantum bigfoot. Wish I knew more about computers back then. I could've spent so much less wasted time if I did just a few part swaps.

[@retronoobtech8551]

Plz try HDD regenerator or spinrite, Drevitalize could also be useful. Obviously you can't do anything if the surface is damaged though

[@angrydove4067]

That is still a better track record than old Quantum SCSI drives.

[@davidp4456]

Have you had any issues with SMD components on the controller board blowing after long term storage? I have a few drives that have gone ‘bang’ and it would be great to find a video that deals with board repairs. Thx

[@theblubus]

I've never had success with Quantum drives :( I had a few fireballs. None of them made it out of the 90s in an operational state

[@the_kombinator]

I love finding games on random old hard disks. I hate finding viruses - you should be scanning them with FPROT June 2006 ;)

[@Pulverrostmannen]

I am in need of parts for one of my Fireballs, you don´t want to spare PCB of your broken drive? my motor drive chip has a hole in it and a few small other parts for my fireball AT1280. The older prodrive usually get issues with leaky electrolytic caps and melting internal rubber bumper.

[@joetheman74]

I've never found old Quantum Fireball drives to be very reliable. Typically whenever I get an old Quantum Fireballs there is usually a better chance of it being dead than working. This typically turns out to be the case. Even when one spins up and boots it is more than likely corrupt and unreliable. At least in my experience it is rare to find one that is still functional without issue.

[@dadigital08]

I also have a Quantum Bigfoot. Probably 2 gigabytes. It was our family's first PC with Windows 95 installed. I remember watching TV by connecting the TV card. I currently have the TV card, but the picture quality is so poor and there is so much noise that I can't watch it.

[@BenDeSwert666]

There's no Bigfoot, I'm dissapointed. 😁

[@pselvi]

I got 2 Bigfoot's, 1.2 and 2.5gb

[@BenDeSwert666]

@@pselvi I've got a 1.2gb too. Surprisingly, it still works!

[@JenniferinIllinois]

Me too. Only Quantum drives I had were Bigfoots and well, they weren't the best. 😉

[@NSHG]

​@@BenDeSwert666 Got a Bigfoot too, a 2.16GB Bigfoot CY. Even the fastest machine I had (P3 500MHz Katmai 2/ MSI MS6163 mobo) felt slow with it but was worth the funny wait for 98SE to install 😅😂

[@Bomon4ik]

mhdd and victoria has to give you some more chances

[@aspinx]

It won't do anything if drive is not detected by bios.

[@Bomon4ik]

@@aspinx both can work without detection (victoria for dos of course)

[@aspinx]

@@Bomon4ik How can it possibly do anything if a drive never raises "READY" flag because it can't read its passport from the service area (which is probably the case when it's not detected by bios)?

[@gilbert1975nf]

0:34 - didn't saw any bigfoot! They were pretty common in the '90!

[@Zontar82]

On a p75 that i scavaenged years ago i found that quantum fireball slab of metal

[@tyta1]

Jumper placement on the bottom of the PCB seems somewhat odd to me... never owned a drive that did not have its jumpers on the side (either between the IDE and power connector, or on the opposite side for some SCSI drives).

[@hardlyworgen71]

I had a Quantum Bigfoot 2.5GB. It died after just a couple years. My IBM Deathstar lasted longer.

[@SidneyCritic]

Oct/95 - I wonder if CrystalDiskInfo can read the hours on something that old - lol -.

[@hypergl6974]

I saved a few of these quantum drives by changing the two "boxed" capacitors on the pcb...

[@aspinx]

Did these caps have any visible issues? How did you figure out they need replacement?

[@hypergl6974]

@@aspinx yes they were leaky and as soon as i touched them with the soldering iron, there was a horrible dead fish smell... After i changed them, the drive starts up normally. Ps: these are just normal electrolitic capacitors, just for whatever reason, they are packed inside those box enclosures

[@aspinx]

@@hypergl6974 And before the replacement, the drive couldn't spin, right?

[@hypergl6974]

@@aspinx exactly, it wanted to, but there was no positive spinning.

[@NSHG]

​@@hypergl6974Not really hoping for a reply but did any of them fail without signs? I have a 2.5GB Quantum Sirocco 2550AT (a fancier Fireball,if you will) that won't spin. One of the ICs near the motor heats up considerably high, so I figure it might be the caps that are the issue?

[@jamesdecross1035]

Why should it be the 1GB drives fail more readily? That's been my experience too.

[@breezie1337]

You know you're screwed when you hear that repetitive ticking sound 😢

[@CaelThunderwing]

Quantum Drives were never remembered for durability. the one w/ an unknown FS, likley was used in an old Mac.

[@liliwinnt6]

3:58 [Music]

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

I have a choice. Sleep because it's midnight, or watch Retrospector78 Obviously I will watch Retrospector78 - It's a no brainer. Sleep is overrated.

[@liliwinnt6]

when i booted a virtual machine with dos 6.22 installation floopy disk and used FDISK to check the partition that was formatted into NTFS by Windows XP it tells me the file system is HPFS lol but if i use the FDISK from the Windows 95 and 98 boot disk even Windows Nashvile boot disk it tells me the file system is NTFS, being correct this time

[@LabCat]

That's because HPFS and NTFS share a lot of common history. HPFS is the OS/2 file system developed, in part, by Microsoft. They use the same partition identifier code. I'm not surprised DOS 6.22 doesn't know what to do with NTFS considering its release timeframe.

[@liliwinnt6]

​@@LabCat thanks for explaining, and would Windows 2000 or xp or even Windows 7 able to access any hpfs partitions? maybe at least read-only access?

[@sootycollier5400]

we always called quantum's as quit-um's on the later 90's gens of them as turn into crap over 500mb and above

[@krz8888888]

I really liked those quantums but can't trust them anymore with their sticky bumpers :(

[@liliwinnt6]

seemingly, quantum hdds prefer to use chips from network device manufacturers like AT&T and LUCENT

[@the_kombinator]

11:12 - low level that one.

[@Valet2]

Quantum, IBM DTLA and Maxtor were the worst hard drives of late 90's - early 2000's!

[@aspinx]

and Fujitsu with their dreaded MPG series.

[@NSHG]

​@@aspinxAnd MPF too. I have two of them that are dead. One had a head failure and the other has a main Cirrus Logic IC defect that makes it not ID properly and cause a "primary HDD failure" message.

[@nooneinparticular4455]

I've never used PCBWay but I've seen enough terribly crowbarred-in promos to loathe them. What do they have to do with 30 year old hard drives?

[@DjM3ss]

hdd pcb's perhaps? You do know that hdd have a controller pcb right?

[@nickwallette6201]

Just that it pays for them.