IDE Disc Drives

Seagate ST-157A

This disc drive is one of the best disc drives based on stepper motors. It was fast and large enough to store the mighty Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.22. Of course, a few games (or programs/applications?) were also welcomed on those 3 platters the disc drive had. I found it very useful as it may became slave/master with a simple jumper switch and it could support the weird BIOS program used to enter information in my ageing 286's EEPROMs. Well, initially it was not equipped with an IDE disc drive but a SCSI one and therefore there was a SCSI controller present in the computer so I had to replace it with an IDE controller and then run a BIOS program of about 19K from a floppy disc to enter the parameters of the Seagate ST-157A - the only drive that worked on that computer (this is a complete lie, there were other IDE drives that were matching the parameters specified in the BIOS program but all I tried, failed to comply).

These drives are very reliable and fast. I pulled one out from a 386 machine about four years ago and I could still access it after gently knocking it a few times with a screwdriver. As I guessed: when I removed the cover I saw that the heads were stuck on the platters - there were trails... Anyway I still have it and it is in working condition even though I take it from my "the disc drive box" and start it one time a month to ensure the heads will not stuck together with the platters again.

The disc drive is may be recognized easily due to it's almost-yellow color. Also it is quite big (half-height 3.5") but that's not what matters. Also, a note engraved on the top cover says: "DO NOT APPLY PRESSURE TO TOP COVER".

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 44,7Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: STEPPER MOTOR
DISCS: 3
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 2,7 (ZBR)
RPM: 3,600
INTERFACE: AT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 28ms

Seagate ST-351A/X

I used one of these disc drives in the early 1993 with a 25MHz 386 computer. I was surprised by the speed of the Seagate ST-351A/X and I really liked the noise that the stepper motor was making while reading/writing to the disc - it is unforgettable.

I further learned that the 40Mb ST-351A/X was the last 40Mb disc drive made and it included stunning technologies like high-density disc, the presence of only one platter and other, but the presence of the stepper motor was quite an oddity for the technology available in that disc drive.

For me, it is the leader of all 40Mb disc drives using stepper motors ever made. It worked fine with my self-designed operating system (OS/MC) until a few weeks ago when I made a wrong combination of the Master/Slave jumpers (I still think I was not paying attention...) and blew it up (it is spinning but after a short seek command, the drive stops responding and the LED keeps blinking). As a general advice, if you deal with this kind of disc drives, please bear in mind that mistaking the jumpers configuration (e.g.: enable master and slave at the same time) blows up the disc drive. So, please consult the jumper configuration table for the Seagate ST-351A/X. You can find it at www.seagate.com.

Anyway, this disc drive is unique because with a simple switch of jumpers, you may force the drive to work in XT systems (8-bit) or in AT systems (16-bit).

The disc drive is constructed well, enclosed in a beautiful black cover with quite a great shape as you can see in the picture. It is not as light as Quantum's models but I was always attracted by heavy disc drives. My favorite is the Seagate ST-4766NV.

Note: I purchased a similar working disc from a friend. The one in the picture above is the defect one. Notice in the picture the way the actuator is linked to the stepper motor; weird but reliable.

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 42,82Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: STEPPER MOTOR
DISCS: 1
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL 2,7 (ZBR)
RPM: 3,048
INTERFACE: AT/XT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 28ms

Seagate ST-3660A

I know almost nothing about this drive. I could start it only two times since I bought it (from a bazaar) and found it was not badly damaged, in fact Scandisk found no errors on it's platters. I mention that the disc drive started the first time I brought it home and the next start was after, let's say, about 10 times of powering on/off the 486 on which I tested the thing. Now, the disc drive is in the same condition: it spins up, rests like this for about 2 seconds (while I can hear it's actuator moving) and then powers back off.

I heard that this drive was used in mass in 1994-1995 as well as new or second hand. After my opinion, it must have been reliable and fast, as shows the chart below.

As you can see in the picture, it is a 3.5" disc drive with weird hexagonal bolts - that's why I couldn't been able to remove it's top cover to make a picture of the interior. I don't like the way Seagate constructed this drive, to me looks ugly although everyone tells me that it's a beautiful piece of technology and it looks quite well. But I found it incomparable with it's elder brother, the Seagate ST-351A/X.

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 545,5Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL
RPM: 3,811
INTERFACE: AT (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 14ms

Maxtor 7120AT

This is a very good drive. All my respects to Maxtor and their 7120AT disc drive. I wanted to obtain this disc (from a very close friend) for my Kenitec 386 computer back in 1997. I have traded a Quantum LP52s 50Mb disc (one of the two I had) and a Seagate ST-351A/X 40Mb disc for the Maxtor 7120AT. It is a very fast disc considering the year (1993) and the technology available then. I used it with success on the Kenitec 386 computer, with Microsoft Windows 95. At games (specially in Doom and Doom 2) the disc was very fast and I had to wait half the time I was waiting with the Seagate ST-157A until the game loaded.

I managed to open the disc (and again, Maxtor should be proud of using standard regular bolts, that can be unscrewed with a regular screwdriver; again shame on Seagate with their hexagonal bolts) and I found (as you can clearly see in the picture) that the disc had two discs and in consequence 4 read/write heads. Notice how beautiful is the drive assembly, but notice that the discs spin "backwards" comparing the Seagate models presented above. Take a look at the ST-157A for example, the actuator is oriented to the right but in these disc drives from Maxtor, the actuator is oriented left. Weird and beautiful.

This was the drive used to be seen in most 386 based computers of 1993-1994 when 4Mb RAM was enough to complete tasks required by Microsoft Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS. Also a 512Kb video card was completing the "bulletproof" 386/33MHz computer.

Note: My Kenitec 386 computer is running at 25MHz (it is an 80386SX, of course, manufactured by AMD) and has 4Mb RAM.

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 129.5Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: ?
RPM: 3,600
INTERFACE: AT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: ?ms

Western Digital Caviar 1210

In winter 2000 I have bought an old but weird Compaq 386SX-20MHz laptop computer from an antiquity shop. I worked good and it was unbelievably fast for an i80386SX/20MHz processor based computer. Back in late 2001, the big laptop was dead. The internal switching power supply died. I opened it up to salvage the programming work from the hard disc drive. Guess what was inside? The 3.5" 1/3 height Western Digital Caviar 1210 disc drive. I was surprised because I knew that laptops were fitted with laptop hard disc drives and not with normal desktop-sized units.

This 212Mb disc is very fast and is one of the best 210Mb disc drives ever made. This is the smaller brother of the Western Digital Caviar 2420. Both units have 64k of cache memory that made them surprisingly fast.

Now days, I use this disc to boot from it when I need to access another disc drive in a computer without booting from it. It helped me a lot when I set up a school network.

Like all Western Digital drives, this one has a colored stripe above the model number. This time it is blue. You can see in the picture a small orange LED. It is not original, I have mounted it to monitor disc drive's activity, although you can clearly notice when the disc is working because of the soft sound the actuator makes while moving on the platter. In fact, Western Digital mounted a small LED connector on every Caviar model, in which you just need to plug a (2V7-3V1) LED and it will light when the drive is in use.

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 212.6Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 1
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: ?
RPM: 3314
INTERFACE: AT (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 13ms

Western Digital Caviar 1270

This is a wonderful little known disc drive. I pulled it out of a working machine in March 2004. Someone came to me and said: "Please try to do something with this machine! It has a 270Mb disc and I don't have enough space even for Windows 95." So I fitted the Pentium 75MHz with a nice 1.28Gb Seagate ST-31276A disc drive and that person went home happily.

I didn't knew Western Digital produced such odd sized disc drives. And the case is unfamiliar with Western Digital. Take a look at the Western Digital Caviar 1210 above and see how the case is constructed (that layout was spread through the entire Caviar series commencing with the beautiful Western Digital Caviar 140). Western Digital used a yellow stripe on this disc drive. (All Caviars had a color stripe above the model number.) Also, if you look below the Western Digital inscription, you can clearly see that the disc drive was manufactured for IBM. In the past there were other disc drive manufacturers producing disc drives for IBM - in these days, IBM itself produces them.

The LED you can see in the picture is not original. I fitted the disc drive with a shiny red LED from a MiniScribe 8425 disc drive because I wanted to see when the disc is operating, although it makes the Western Digital characteristic sound when it moves the actuator to read or write to the platters.

The disc ran fine with Windows 95 OSR 2 and an Intel 486/100MHz fitted with 24Mb RAM for my cousin. One day, in August 2004, I have configured a network for a school and replaced a faulty disc with this one. I gave my cousin the match for the Western Digital Caviar 1210, the 420Mb Western Digital Caviar 2420. This is a typical WD disc: fast and reliable.

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 270.4Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 1
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: ?
RPM: 4500 (?)
INTERFACE: AT (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 12ms

Western Digital Caviar 2420

I have extracted this wonderful disc from an AT&T computer in August 2004. This is the larger brother of the Western Digital Caviar 1210. This model has also 64k of cache memory and it is very fast. They are always faster than their same-size competitors. This model runs very well on an i486/100MHz processor based computer running Microsoft Windows 98 and Microsoft Office 97. It is indeed perfect for a 486 computer.

This disc drive continues the Western Digital tradition and has a pink stripe above the model number. I have added a small green LED to this model. I like to give each disc drive a personality so I give each Caviar model a different color of LED. This is just a fantasy of mine.

While moving the actuator, this disc drive makes the same sound like is smaller brother. In fact, this is the copy of the 212Mb disc drive above but this one has 2 platters and in consequence has doubled the size. This disc drive has 4 read/write heads.

PHOTO AVAILABLE SOON.

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 425.3Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: ?
RPM: 3314
INTERFACE: AT (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 13ms

Western Digital Caviar 2540

This is a 540Mb disc drive, typical Caviar disc drive, fast and reliable. Now I am using it in a bulletproof system for Office use. The system is equipped with an AMD k6-II/500MHz processor and 128Mb of PC133 SDRAM. The system is completed by an ATI Rage IIc video card with 8Mb of SGRAM (very good option when working in 2D mode). I thought that a large disc just would not be necessary if the system runs just Microsoft Windows 98 and Microsoft Office 97. Further more, the computer is part of a network so, extra data is stored on a small network server. Note: Originally, the computer had a 40Gb Maxtor disc drive which I have put on my Athlon XP 1800+. The next step was adding a SCSI interface and a huge Seagate ST-4766NV 630Mb SCSI disc drive. It made a lot of noise and then I gave up at this solution.

Take a look at the picture now. The first thing you see is the color of the Western Digital Caviar 2540. From the past, we have learned that Caviars were the same (black) at exterior and only different in the interior (size and number of platters). This drive is built in a similar enclosure as the other caviars but the cover resembles more to the Western Digital Caviar 1270. From now on, all Caviars will share the same type of cover (with little variations) with the same color. Western Digital kept the tradition of "striping" the drive with a color stripe above the model number. And this one is orange.

I would probably think this drive is the brother of the Caviar 1270 but they do not look the same. One important aspect is that the Caviar 1270 has one 270Mb platter and the Caviar 2540 has two 270Mb platters (but this has no importance as disc drive manufacturers always added another platter to an existing model, just to comply with industry requests).

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 540.8Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: ?
RPM: 4500
INTERFACE: AT (IDE mode 3)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 12ms

Quantum ELS 170

This 170Mb Quantum disc drive is very fast. I am currently using it for developing the OS/MC operating system. I have extracted it from a Compaq computer based on a 486/33MHz processor. Besides the ProDrive ELS inscription, there is no model number engraved on the disc drive so I gave it this simple name: Quantum ProDrive ELS 170.

The disc drive is finished quite well in an aluminum case as Quantum did with most of the disc drives from 1990 to 1994. This is a typical Quantum disc drive: pretty fast and very light.

There is not much to say about this disc drive. It is fast and reliable and I would recommend it to any 386 user. It can cope with Microsoft Windows 95 or on the other hand, Microsoft Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS.

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 170.3Mb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: ?
RPM: ?
INTERFACE: AT (IDE)
AVERAGE ACCESS: ?ms

Seagate ST-31276A

This disc I have extracted from a Compaq Pentium 133MHz computer. I used this disc for HI-NET Server with Windows 2000 and server software. It was good but a little too small to hold the entire operating system and software. What I noticed was the infernal noise this disc drive made when moving the actuator.

This drive found its place in the system from where I have extracted the Western Digital Caviar 1270.

This Seagate disc remembers me about the old Conner disc drives. (Conner was founded by an ex-Seagate engineer that founded its own disc drive factory, that even uses its name). I like the way this disc drive is constructed and I also like that Seagate attached the jumper configuration, so it is easier to know how to set the drive to work for your needs. Western Digital adopted a very fine way to set the jumpers of their Caviar disc drives. Today's CD-ROM makers adopted the same strategy.

This disc drive is from the Medalist series, that include fast models but producing high noise especially when moving the actuator.

Finally, HI-NET Server got another disc drive, the Seagate ST-32122A.

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 1.28Gb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: RLL
RPM: 5,376
INTERFACE: AT (IDE mode 4)
AVERAGE ACCESS: 10,5ms

Seagate ST-32122A

This is the second disc that I have fitted to the HI-NET Server. It belonged to a Compaq computer based on a 233MHz Pentium processor, the same processor that is in HI-NET Server's hearth.

This is another disc drive that resembles to its Conner cousins. It is from the same Medalist series of solid disc drives and relatively fast. This disc drive makes half the infernal noise than elder brother, the Seagate ST-31276A.

< The picture shows some Compaq affixed stickers with warranty and the white right smaller one contains the so-called Compaq spare part number.

HI-NET Server still runs on this disc drive (and now we are in September 2004) and I have nothing to worry about as it will still run like this for a long time as Seagate disc drives have proven their reliability over the time.

In the picture, you can see the jumper configuration table is in its right place as it is on every respectable Seagate disc drive.

CHARACTERISTICS:

CAPACITY: 2.12Gb
ACTUATOR TYPE: VOICE COIL
DISCS: 2
MEDIA TYPE: THIN FILM
RECORDING METHOD: ?
RPM: ?
INTERFACE: AT (IDE mode 4)
AVERAGE ACCESS: ?ms