Sounds of the Daeyoung DX-3120A

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Daeyoung DX-3120A
Country of Origin: Korea
Introduced: 1992
Interface: IDE (40 pin)
Capacity: 120MB
Form: 3.5 SL (0.5")
CHS: 866 / 8 / 34
LZN: 865
WPC: 65535
Track-track: 1.6ms
Linear access: 9.1ms
Random access: 15.7ms
Rotational: 3600RPM
Media: Unknown
Disks: 2
Actuation: Rotary band swingarm stepper
Feedback: Embedded servo(?)
Lift/Lock/Park: None
Brake: Dynamic
Service life: 100,000 hours
Related models: Unknown
Failures: Unknown
Settings: aioinc.ddns.net...
My thoughts:
A late Christmas present, this is one of my most highly requested drives. I skipped way ahead and recorded some IDE drives at the request of several members in the Discord server. I still have many MFM/RLL drives I'd like to get through, but it can't hurt to do some of these in the meantime. This particular video goes out to ‪@arnlol‬, who just acquired one of his own via eBay. Sadly, his probably does not work. Hopefully this answers any questions he might have about what a working one acts like!
This is one of the last stepper drives out there - The other being the Kalok Octagon II KL-3120 (soon to come!). The Kalok was introduced in 1991, and this in 1992. Sadly, Daeyoung went under in 1993, leaving Kalok to be the last manufacturer of stepper hard disk drives until their demise in 1994. It's interesting to note that JTS purchased the remnants of Kalok and ditched their entire product line - In another life, maybe JTS would have kept developing the Octagton II, and we would have seen 240MB or even larger stepper motor drives. They probably would not have been good.
Lovely drive, I don't recommend it to anyone but collectors, though. Not a fast drive, not a reliable drive, not a cheap drive, not a common drive. I recommend the Maxtor 7120AT over this for a 120MB IDE 3.5 SL drive.

[@junker15]

Almost thought this was a voice coil drive at first, but the hdmotion gave it away as a stepper drive. Very interesting drive!

[@TheDiskMaster]

I have never heard a voice coil drive that squeaks like this, especially not a 3.5 SL drive. Arnlol's video shows the drive with the cover removed.

[@XL-Tech]

I love the sound of these! I like these high pitched steppers like Kalok used.

[@TheDiskMaster]

This stepper is actually completely different from the unit Kalok uses, but the driver is the same.

[@yamlcase230]

TRIGGERED!

[@TheDiskMaster]

Huh?

[@arnlol]

Ah I see that description, you really did move things around to post this so I could hear it expecting the one I got to not work, that’s pretty nice though unexpectedly I managed to hear mine for a little bit before it died. I’m not sure why but I really like the sounds of late stepper based drives like these or the Kalok ones, they really sound amazing!

[@TheDiskMaster]

Yep I had fully expected yours to be stone dead and so pushed up the filming and uploading of this video so you could see it earlier. Late Christmas present, I guess? Expect a return to "normal" MFM/RLL drives for next week, I've still got a lot of those to cover before I want to go full swing into the intelligent drives.

[@cdos9186]

The cover oddly reminds me of a early Conner Peripherals or Samsung SHD drive, but I know this one has nothing to do with those. Perhaps they used the same supplier for the casting? It just seems all too familiar with the shape and look if you were to remove the label and compare them. Also this drive sounds really nice and loud but also very precise. Wish there were more out there, and maybe there are...

[@TheDiskMaster]

I think there are probably more of these in it's home country or places nearby. I know of a gentleman in China who has one. Lots of drives used tub chassis like this, it was just a common design. It makes for easy automation during mass production.

[@cdos9186]

@@TheDiskMaster Were there really that many of these units produced? I certainly haven't ever known of them existing until you were the first person that showed one off awhile ago, I wonder if they are indeed just more common in their home country. I wish for a lot of drives we were able to acquire the production numbers, especially the really difficult to find one's, but it appears we will have to take our best guess...

[@TheDiskMaster]

​@@cdos9186I'm not sure. There are a lot of drives I wish I could find more information on, but good luck. These drives were only on the market for one year, so numbers are probably rather low. I bet they were mostly sold to OEMs.

[@petevenuti7355]

Ya know the song "my Sharona" , got a drive or pair together that initializes to that toon? Agggg ah. ag ah aggg ag aggg agg ag ag aggg ag..

[@TheDiskMaster]

I'm not sure I understand the question

[@petevenuti7355]

@@TheDiskMaster did you ever hear that song?

[@TheDiskMaster]

@@petevenuti7355 Yes, I've heard that song and Weird Al's parody of it.

[@petevenuti7355]

@@TheDiskMaster I used to have a SCSI array who's initialization routine shook the desk about the same as that played too loudly. I forgotten how scuzzy the lyrics were though. Don't think I was listening back then.

[@TheDiskMaster]

​@@petevenuti7355I'm not much of a collector of SCSI disks, so I wouldn't know. Sorry.

[@MyComputerStudios_]

By the way, this is the last ever stepper motor drive to be ever made

[@Kali_Krause]

Second to last one. Kalok became the last manufacturer of stepper motor drives as Daeyoung went bankrupt in 1993 while Kalok lasted until 1994, making Kalok the last of the stepper motor drives

[@TheDiskMaster]

Yes, that's why I put it in the thumbnail. Additionally, the Kalok Octagon II KL-3120 was still for sale a full year after Daeyoung filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations. This is the last drive designed, but Kalok was the last company producing them.

[@NikolaiKostadinov-dc7jq]

I wish i could own one...

[@TheDiskMaster]

Any reason in particular? They're not very good.

[@michvod]

When the PC has more RAM than the HD's capacity ;)

[@TheDiskMaster]

Yep, the intention was to run Windows 7 on this machine for testing of some more modern drives, but I haven't gotten it to work very well yet.

[@JankPods0201]

@@TheDiskMaster Windows 7 on a Pentium III 550? That's crazy! I know it is Possible, But i bet you're using Underpowered hardware to get more seeking sounds from the drives, Or that's all you have. I could be wrong, But that's what I'm guessing.

[@TheDiskMaster]

​@@JankPods0201Neither. It has nothing to do with lack of hardware and nothing to do with increasing the seek sounds. A slower machine actually will make a problem out of that. I wanted a single machine which could test every type of drive, and that includes SATA and SAS. That way, all benchmarks are comparable directly. Problem is that most of those newer drives prefer something a bit more modern than DOS!

[@JankPods0201]

@@TheDiskMaster OK, good to know about your system that is universally compatible with multiple drives like IDE/PATA, MFM (ST-506/412) ESDI, SATA, SAS, SCSI (50, 68, And 80-Pin) You've shown that I'm wrong and forever will be.

[@TheDiskMaster]

​​@@JankPods0201 Yep, this machine will talk to IDE drives of any type (including UATA100), SATA1/SAS drives (via a converter), MFM/RLL drives (with the DTC 7287 controller installed), SCSI drives including narrow/wide/SCA with an Adaptec AHA2940AU, and with the swap of a control board, it should do ESDI drives just fine when I find myself a nice controller. It also has USB and a PCMCIA adapter available for talking to other types of devices, like the Integral Viper and external USB "semihard" drives like Iomega Zip, Castlewood Orb, LS-120, etc. It was always the intention with this build to make a machine which could talk to every type of drive. It's just the newest one I have that still fully supports 16-bit ISA controllers.

[@engineer359]

I don't understand, who is really last stepper

[@Kali_Krause]

Daeyoung was the second to last hard drive manufacturer that continued making stepper motor hard drives until 1993. Afterward, Kalok became the very last company to make stepper motor drives as most manufacturers moved toward SCSI and IDE. Kalok went bankrupt in 1994 and that ended the Era of MFM/RLL drives

[@TheDiskMaster]

Kalok designed their drive first, meaning Daeyoung's drive was the last to be designed - with the newest feature set and the most modern look. Kalok's was just on the market longer, because they persisted another year after Daeyoung's bankruptcy.

[@TheDiskMaster]

@@Kali_Krause The Kalok Octagon II KL-3120 and this Daeyoung DX-3120A are both IDE drives as shown in the video. MFM/RLL died much sooner than 1994. There are lots of IDE and SCSI stepper drives out there

[@engineer359]

thanks guys :)

[@TheDiskMaster]

​@@engineer359 No problem