🤣 I wish you had said all that before I contacted them, I hate looking like a retard going "oh cancel my order, wait nvm, I'll keep it.. Oh I'll rebuy it then"

🤣

edit: So I had him confirm it was the 2.5GB model. But based on what I have been told in this thread, I decided to keep it.

SW-SSG wrote:

Are you sure that's a 10GB drive? "2.5AT EL25A881" refers to a 2.5GB unit.

I like the EL 2.5GB model. It quadrupled the cache size of the previous generation (SE, 128KB->512KB) and was the first quantum drive to implement UDMA66.

konc wrote:

You’re right, let me say a bit more about what I thought was old news by now. […]
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You’re right, let me say a bit more about what I thought was old news by now.

Quantum was using some Philips chip on their boards, which was recalled and replaced by a new version. At that time Quantum took a decision which defined its future: they did sell the already manufactured HDDs knowing that they had the problematic chip and only used the new one for new disks.

Models affected the most where the 6.4GB ST and EX, because those where the HDDs with that chip sold in larger quantities. All of those drives are guaranteed to fail (some of them spectacularly with the chip kind of exploding/melting -hence the "fireball" jokes, or less with the drive just refusing to spin up).

The thing is that you cannot strictly limit it to the aforementioned models. For example there were for sure some 3.2GB drives with that chip (who knows, maybe others as well?) and at the same time new 6.4GB EXs and STs were manufactured with the revised chip (no problems, that's probably why some drives still work).

This is what made people hesitant to put their trust on Quantum anymore. During the peak of the Quantum drives failing we didn’t know exactly the cause and the affected models. Even later we couldn’t even tell if a drive has the problematic or the revised chip. The truth is that the problem was isolated and not some serious mechanical/design flaw. Of course revised and later models were good, but Quantum’s approach being so secretive and denying turned out suicidal.

Heck, I was working for a PC OEM back then and I remember a specific period literally 9 out of 10 of a 6.4GB drives batch failing within a couple of months. Without knowing anything more at that time, we just stopped putting Quantum drives in our PCs, Quantum’s denial to give us an official excuse ended up damaging our brand/status. In fact we never sold another Quantum drive again, a bit later Maxtor bought it. I’m sure others acted in a similar way, signing Quantum’s gravestone.

I indeed have a dead 6.4GB ST, but it's equipped with Ti, Lucent and other chips than Philips.