Checking out a giant lot of 38 hard drives, will they work?!

[@Avra_64]

Holy crap thats alotta drives! Absolutely love long videos like these 😁

[@arnlol]

Yes it is, thank you :)

[@bigbluebananabread]

It's really incredible how well this lot turned out. Quite a few nice models to pick up, so I'm very glad for you that it went so nicely! Always liked the Conner Seagate's & that Mustang really sounds awesome. Was really cool to hear it boot into Windows, which is definitely a nice feat based on the commendable effort required for that! A few of the modern drives like that 1TB Ultrastar look like they may still come in handy (given their perfect health on some!), which for the price is additionally crazy. Glad I didn't have to eat that shoe though :)

[@arnlol]

I can’t believe I missed the shoe :( (actually I can, there was very little chance that that thing could've worked) Yes this lot was really really good it was pretty crazy!

[@theaustralianconundrum]

I get mine mainly from working Apple Macintosh older 80's and 90's SCSI based machines. Yard sales, deceased estates and Goodwill stores and thrift shops. Most of the drives you get in lots tend to be scratched/as-is, not working etc........ Either way the very early large drives from 5.25" are what fetch the huge money if they are working.

[@danandlaundry]

I have a 320GB 3.5 inch WD drive I pulled out of an early 2009 20 inch iMac. The drive works but I hadn't checked the drive for bad sectors or anything as it's just an OS installer drive

[@arnlol]

Well if you can find some drives on those kind of places then yeah it can be good I assume. Most of the collectors I know/have spoken with seem to be doing the same as me though, buying on ebay or other online sites. As for the lots of bad drives, I'm the one that decides to go for them because I like messing with drives and trying to make them work if possible.

[@tyta1]

Micropolis Mustang - love seeing such incredibly rare drives 🤩

[@cdos9186]

They honestly are fairly pleasant drives when they work, but they don't last that long. They were supposed to be a more premium consumer drive at the time, but they are delicate and have a high failure rate. The chances of getting one that works perfectly is incredibly slim. Micropolis really tried giving it their very best near the end, but just like the previous drives they manufactured, they also proved unreliable and expensive. They are well built, but the real world reliability with them is just not nearly as good as the competition was at the time. This also is why there are very few of them around: high cost, high failure rate, low sales, and many of them failed or showed issues even back when they were new.

[@arnlol]

It’s a nice drive, I just wish it worked better than that. It could still be demonstrated so that’s better than nothing I guess.

[@Repeatingpower7]

Wow, awesome haul! You’re lucky to keep finding these lots of hard drives lol

[@arnlol]

This one was from eBay but only shipped in France I think, here most people just don’t care about old hard drives at all. Let’s be real for most people drives like these are basically worthless.

[@titotech]

NICE, new video

[@arnlol]

a bit late but I hope you liked it :)

[@TheSpotify95]

Not bad especially how you managed to snag a 1TB in good working order! Some of those smaller hard drives are ideal for use with older computers, or for people who want to restore an older PC to how it would have been back in the day.

[@arnlol]

Yep, sadly most people just replace the drives with flash storage, I personnally think trying to use a period appropriate drive is so much better.

[@KliaTech]

16:46 with my caviar 33100 there was also a similar situation; seektest was carried out on a damaged plate.

[@arnlol]

I know someone else who had a caviar with even worse damage than this one that still did the seek test as well. I guess they aren't that picky about their condition uh

[@adinnugroho6544]

9:05 : My HDD is also Hitachi Deskstar, but mine is different model. Made in Shenzhen China and capacity is 160 GB. It was bought in 2008, and is still going strong even today. Previously used for PC, and now as external storage. As I use it as External storage, I formatted into exFAT. NTFS seems just feel 🦥. I thought the enclosure was the problem, it's actually file system on HDD itself need to change 😅😅 I have done it, and it works great 👍. Btw, that's sound character of this HDD. Already familiar with that 😅

[@arnlol]

If you bought it in 2008 it probably is a different series but it might still look the same and sound similar though

[@aspinx]

33:20 I think something happened with the mic here, as this drive should be much louder. Btw, does anyone know which 3.5" pata drive is the quietest? (when it's idle, but spinning)

[@arnlol]

I don’t think so, protégé's seeking isn’t very loud and they are ball bearings as well which makes the seeking seem even quieter probably. I wouldn’t be able to tell you which drive has the quietest spinning sound, obviously fluid bearings ones, and probably ones with low number of platters? (Lower chance of vibration and maybe less "air" noise I guess)

[@aspinx]

@@arnlol 33:20 timecode is for Hitachi Desktar, 40 Gb. I was referring to the spindle sound (not seeking sound). In the video is barely noticable, but it's a 7000 rpm drive and remember them being much louder, which made me think that something was going on with the mic. As for the noise question, thank you for you answer @arnlol!

[@arnlol]

@@aspinx Ah, this one. It’s a 180GXP, which uses fluid bearings just like modern drives, so the spindle is very silent. There’s a drive that looks basically identical to it and is 40GB as well, but part of the 120GXP series, with a different model number, that one has ball bearings and the spin sound is louder. (This drive here is actually a short-stroked 60GB, the model number seems to indicate it should be 60GB and the bottom part of the label looks like a second partial label was stuck above the original one, and I assume the original probably said it was 60GB.)

[@XLGaming]

the U5 at 15:36 sounds normal to me. Some have that seektest.

[@arnlol]

It should have another part afterwards. I did try it on my PCs but it didn’t get detected. Maybe one day I’ll get a 20GB PCB that I can try on it.

[@Mathmos252]

10:26 i have a similar seagate that does this when there's an OS installed. It doesnt do it if the drive is empty tho

[@douro20]

Some of the later Maxtor drives will do a full seek test after initialization.

[@danielthorpe4750]

Those drive sounds take me back! I remember the days of knowing what drive was in a PC from the power-up sound. I have masses of drives, most perfectly working - would you like them? Mostly ordinary models 250GB - 1TB, nothing interesting, WD Blue, etc. Most of them work fine and they're in the way. You'd have to pay shipping though!

[@arnlol]

I think even today someone that is interested in modern drives probably could still tell, even if the drives are obviously much quieter than in the 90s. (But that's assuming the PC even still has an hard drive, as many PCs now just have an SSD) As for the drives well, I dont have that much money and I'm basically out until June, but also it's likely you are too far away for it to be worth it (Maybe not I guess, but most people commenting seem to be from the US and I am in Europe.)

[@NSHG]

Speaking of drives... I managed to find a NOS SCSI Seagate ST336607LW. Strange that two drives of the exact same model, one reads Ultra 320 and is loud as heck (despite having quite low PoH count) while the NOS drive is quiet and reads Ultra 160.

[@arnlol]

I guess one has a different PCB revision? The loud one has bad bearings I assume, that can still happen even if the drive doesn’t have a lot of hours (it might have been dropped etc I guess)

[@luisdbr9885]

Hello Arnold0, great video, I have a question today, I bought a Quantum Prodrive els 85AT and I think it is suffering from the rubber bumper problem, I just posted a video on my channel and if you could, could you tell me if this Does the hard drive have a long useful life? I installed windows 3.11 and it works perfectly with 0 bad sectors so far.. I'm waiting for your response!!

[@arnlol]

It’s impossible to tell the life left in a old hard drive honestly but it not having bad sectors is good. However, yes even though the heads aren’t stuck your drive is definitely suffering from the rubber issue, actually it is so bad that the heads are rubbing on the spindle on spin up/down! If you continue using the drive like this it is very likely that the heads will eventually be damaged, but obviously fixing it requires being ingenious to make a "replacement" bumper as the original bumper is under the platter in these drives. I know that a replacement 3D printed part exists on eBay but it’s quite expensive for a piece of plastic, personally I’ve used small pieces of copper wire, maybe it’s not the best but it has worked fine for me. Obviously if you open up the drive to try and fix it you need to be very careful if you want it to remain bad sector free.

[@luisdbr9885]

Hi Arnold0, I fixed it!!! I disassembled the upper part of the magnet and placed a small ball of paper to serve as a limiter so the arm wouldn't go beyond the limit and touch the axis. But unfortunately it developed bad sectors but I can install and use it normally!!!

[@Kali_Krause]

I see that Westren Digital 21200 was made in Malaysia. WD made a huge mistake moving to Malaysia in 1998. Those ones had a high failure rate

[@arnlol]

I know that some WD from Malaysia supposedly have issues though I’m not exactly sure which ones/from what year are the drives with problems.

[@danandlaundry]

He had 2 more WD Cavier 21200s. One with some bad sectors and one with tons of bad sectors that only has about 100MB of usable space. Still boots Windows 95 though

[@randomyt666]

I honestly would love to know how on earth you find such massive lots of drives for so cheap.

[@arnlol]

EBay and leboncoin. Not even doing anything special. When there’s auctions (like these were) and they don’t ship out of France, the price often stays at the minimum amount the seller set (and it was the case with these)

[@Mathmos252]

this is crazy, how many drives do you have now?

[@arnlol]

Im not even sure, I need to update my file that list my drives, I haven’t done it in a while… I got more modern drives that were given to me so I’m probably at about 350 I think.

[@Mathmos252]

@@arnlol Will i live long enough to see you buy your 1000th drive? Considering your collection grew from 70 to 350 in Just 3 years , that May even be possibile , Crazy xD

[@ciberspaceluna8386]

55:05 My WD2500AAJS-75VWA0 sounds like this but a bit shorter seektest

[@arnlol]

Sometimes two drives of the same model don’t sound exactly the same, so I’m not surprised that the seek test could be slightly different.

[@Placeholder71]

3:32 Yikes. I would call that "damage"

[@nuherbleath461]

I have a Seagate just like that in my pc. Wasn’t the fact it was a barracuda, it’s spool up that I recognised

[@arnlol]

Even with modern drives if you know them well you can recognize the brand by the sound they make

[@GamerisawesomeYTonPSN]

Why my hdd so slow (them) because your hdd has infinite ♾ bad sectors

[@havocking9224]

i know this music from game named "The Long Drive", plays in radio. Nice sound.

[@arnlol]

I’ll be honest I just grabbed a song from KZbin music library that was a correct length and sounded decent. So it’s probably been used in a lot of other things too I guess.

[@cdos9186]

That went way better than I would have expected! I am so glad the seller actually packaged those as good as they did, that probably helped a lot of those drives out and seems like they escaped with no physical damage from shipping! The Micropolis Mustang you are lucky you got that drive to work at all I will be honest, those are extremely fragile and although they are supposed to be more premium grade consumer drives, they still seem to have a high failure rate from what I have seen. Glad that all the Seagate Medalist drives survived and proved that they deserved the medal on the label haha. The attention to detail and quality of the video was amazing, and that must have taken a really long time to produce! Great work!!! As for the ST500DM002, I still am amazed how many of those have reallocated sectors while the older Barracuda drives work perfectly fine?? Either way, you got so many good drives that work for the price!

[@arnlol]

Im glad the seller actually did a decent job of packing the drives. The micropolis is really not good, my guess is one of the heads is probably bad but at least I managed to make it do something… Its a bummer their drives seem to have reliability problems. I recently got no less than 6 ST500DM002 alongside other modern drives for free, two of them have reallocated/pending, the other 4 are ok. One of the ok one has 75k hours which is crazy. I’m glad you liked that video :)

[@cdos9186]

@@arnlol Hope you do more of them in the future! It is always fascinating to see how they end up going especially when you buy lots that are said to be full of bad drives. Wow you got six ST500DM002 drives? I am surprised that they all didn't have reallocated sectors, my luck with the modern Seagate drives like that is really bad. These types of videos are my favorite even if they do take awhile to make.

[@Mathmos252]

yo arnold how do i setup an mfm card?

[@arnlol]

There's a lot of different ones, which have different jumpers settings etc... If you aren't in DiskMaster's discord, maybe you could join it and ask for help with MFM there, plenty of people in it that have used MFM stuff before (a lot more than I have) who probably could help you

[@Mathmos252]

@@arnlol ok, and how do i join that discord?

[@arnlol]

@@Mathmos252 I can see that you’ve joined the server so yeah you can ask there if you need help I assume some people in it will know more stuff about MFM than me

[@notsoseagatey]

i see one of the drives having an apple logo on it, might've been pulled off an imac(?) edit: yes its pulled off an imac, i saw an early alu imac with one.

[@arnlol]

Yes that’s likely the case or some kind of apple tower like a Mac Pro I guess.

[@notsoseagatey]

@@arnlolprolly pulled off one of the newer Intel iMacs, can also be pulled off a G5, not sure

[@Vindicator2.0]

Woahhhhhhhhhhh!, well i kinda like the seagate, maxtor and samsung bcz these are my favourite hard drives, "one of my favourite hard drive are the ones like the ST3300820SCE which is my hard drive or the popular ST3250820AS" and the Samsung spinpoint diamond max plus hard drives. and the seagate first hard drive, was like some robot having a seizure.

[@arnlol]

Seems like you prefer more modern drives compared to what I usually aim for. I got a bunch of modern drives for free recently, so you’ll see some when I eventually make a new collection video (but I’m really not sure when)

[@Vindicator2.0]

what about the first hard drive you tested out. its sounded like robot having seizure bcz its a smashed hard drive. i love to hear these drives as these are recorded in my other video. i love the drives from 2001-2016 hard drives. i prefer the 2007 or the 2009 hard drives more bcz they are the era that i bought all the hard drives!

[@TomaszCzarnecki-oh2hv]

19:06

[@TomaszCzarnecki-oh2hv]

11:41

[@JankPods0201]

What a bizarre bet! Eating a shoe, A dog would do that!

[@arnlol]

Well it was a way for them to say they thought there was no chance it would work :)

[@Stay_alert]

Surely that's gotta make 300, right?

[@JankPods0201]

Possibly.

[@arnlol]

I'm way over 300 now but I haven’t updated my file with all the drives for some time so I don’t know how many I actually have currently. Before I got that lot I already was really close to 300. I was given a bunch of modern drives for free recently, and I have got some more drives I bought too so yeah… I’m probably close to 350 now actually which is kinda ridiculous tbf. I’m not looking forward to doing the next collection video, it might be a pain and will take so much time uhhh x')

[@Stay_alert]

@@arnlol Good luck, man. And hey, I still have that fujitsu drive on hold just in case you change your mind

[@Phoenix_2924]

I have the 320gb Caviar at 11:41 Sounds just like mine!!