NEC DPTA-351500 15GB (2000) - Hard Drive Sounds

[@bigbluebananabread]

Please note: The majority of the captured footage is not from this drive. Unfortunately, this thing stopped working when I pulled it out of storage to record it, so this is a pretty rough video. I lost most of the original footage. If things look weird, that's why! Only SpinRite is original, with the rest being cobbled together using what this drive could still do (speedsys, only part if it though), alongside spliced footage using a Samsung SV1364D in its stead (windows & hdmotion). Take the benchmarks with a grain of salt. Sadly, hdmotion isn't perfect, but I tried my best! You can tell by watching the cursor in the bottom left change speed rather frequently. The audio is also rather rough, being from an old test recording from early last year. I hope this is still "good enough" to demo this drive, apologies for the issues with the video! Thanks for watching as usual!

[@notsoseagatey]

Sadly drives (both old and new) just randomly die in storage. I have a 160GB seagate and a while after the video I did on it the thing refused to write before just dying.

[@NelsonBigGunP200Fan]

I take this model was before the GMR heads and glass platter deskstar 40GV and 75GXP line? The seek test sounds similar to the older metal platter models like you said the 37GP. I know NEC made deskstars later on with said glass platters, head ramps, and GMR heads. I can't help but think i might have had one around the 2000s that i got from work, a 40GB model, i think a 60GXP... A shame that this didn't last long. Did it die to the krr krr krr scratch of death?

[@jjohnson71958]

make a great ringtone for sure =)

[@Jones5121]

ibm drives always sounded more 'metallic' than other designs, even of the same time frame

[@notsoseagatey]

The bearings sound actually quite decent, not nice but not loud, sad that it died. These things have an interesting design. I've heard somewhere that theres a version of hdmotion that only does seek commands, might wanna try that.

[@bigbluebananabread]

Yeah, it's not too bad honestly! Luckily the footage for this video was enough, but it'd definitely be nice to do that on some other really sick drives!

[@thegeforce6625]

yeah, my inital 37.5gb 37GP just died in storage one day, worked fine when i put it away, was dead next time i got it out. odd.

[@bigbluebananabread]

I immediately thought of your drive too when writing that! I'm really shocked this seems to just affect this series (none of my other IBMs across generations have done this...) it's really quite weird. Did you store your drive near other hard drives by chance? Curious if that's perhaps a contributing factor.

[@notsoseagatey]

Yeah they randomly die in storage which is sad

[@bigbluebananabread]

@@notsoseagatey Yup. Weirdly my own experience with these dying in storage is particularly bad... Usually most drives I have have done perfectly fine, but for these even when they're 100% perfect beforehand? Totally cooked. Can't be a coincidence with this particular series, although I guess the sample size is pretty small..

[@thegeforce6625]

@@bigbluebananabread yeah it lived under some other drives stacked on top of it in a storage box, probably bumped a bunch in storage too as i moved the box around or rummaged through the box to get to other drives in the box.

[@SimonFeay]

I'm looking to buy this model of drive. Let me know if you have any inventory to sell

[@bigbluebananabread]

Apologies, this is the only one I have of this model. This one also stopped working entirely in storage unfortunately so I don't have any other units to offer. Sorry!

[@DamianRukowski95]

@@bigbluebananabread😢 i wanted one too

[@PKZAIT]

IBM OEM for NEC?

[@bigbluebananabread]

So this is a drive NEC actually manufactured! IBM allowed them to produce drives using their designs, so this is a product of that deal! ExcelStor later took over the deal when NEC departed from the industry. It's an interesting part of history!

[@PKZAIT]

@@bigbluebananabread Thank you.