Surprisingly my old 120mb conner hard drive is actually quite quiet. Must be because it is only 3500rpm

Interesting to me are only the loudest ones. In a "period correct system", with a nice case, a standard drive is more appetizing than a more modern and "dead" solution.
I would say that SCSI is even more interesting from a vintage perspective.

On the other hand, CompactFlash is a winner for anything fast and economic.
The "CF"-problems I had were connected to 8GB Transcend cards - bought two new ones and they were all trouble ... there's something fishy about this size from this vendor(of course it could all stem from a bad batch but during testing there were no bad sectors detected).
All other Transcend cards(0.5, 1, 2 and 4 GB) have been great so far. The Indutrial versions seem good but seem to have no "DMA support" & need more testing.... and do not forget about the price tag.

for a data drive I'm all for CF/SD/etc but all my PC's boot off a real HDD. Hearing it spin up during post is all part of the experience

I don't know what special purpose real old harddrive could have. I used old harddrives mostly out of necessity, these were cheapest and I had them laying around anyway.
I found it a challenge to pick the best one for my particular build (like how I picked my 1GB IBM drive for my DX4-100 build, it never needed more storage space anyway).

But I still have a lot of old drives stored away, all the way from 40MB, including a few of those drives which have a connector that doesn't have any pins, but a connector similar to some 5.25in FDD have.

I even have some prairytech harddrive, which is a smaller formfactor, I kept all of it as I found it interesting and worth saving from the scrappers.

I don't have any of the really heavy 5.25in harddrives that dionb mentioned, these were too heavy to take home with me anyway. And I mean, the later Quantum Bigfoots were nowhere near the mass of those old 5.25in harddrives.

I do understand the need and wish to have a real platter drive running. If the drive that are picked, is too loud, then choose the next drive in the spare drive pile. That is how I usually do. Yet... My stock of old drives below 8gb are nearly all dead, and those that are working, are beginning to get really loud and sometimes they will refuse to start up on boot. That is why I have gone the way of CF cards on my MS-Dos-6.22 machines and my Amiga's. Dealing with Win98se machines and Os2 machines, then I have one single 8gb left, wich is the largest capacity that Os/2 can use, without the need of using a special boot-disk with large drive support. Once that is gone, I will switch to SD or CF cards, for Os/2. For Win98, I still have 128 or larger seagate drives. And with seatools, I can just mod the drive to whatever space I need.

Yes. I do understand the need and wish for a real platter, yet there will come a time when they are too expensive and rare to get.

brostenen wrote:

I do understand the need and wish to have a real platter drive running. If the drive that are picked, is too loud, then choose the next drive in the spare drive pile. That is how I usually do. Yet... My stock of old drives below 8gb are nearly all dead, and those that are working, are beginning to get really loud and sometimes they will refuse to start up on boot. That is why I have gone the way of CF cards on my MS-Dos-6.22 machines and my Amiga's. Dealing with Win98se machines and Os2 machines, then I have one single 8gb left, wich is the largest capacity that Os/2 can use, without the need of using a special boot-disk with large drive support. Once that is gone, I will switch to SD or CF cards, for Os/2. For Win98, I still have 128 or larger seagate drives. And with seatools, I can just mod the drive to whatever space I need.

Interesting. Is the 8.4G limit a thing with Warp/Warp Connect? Does drive size limiting work with OS/2?

GabrielKnight123 wrote:

I have a bunch of old hard drives IDE type ranging from 200mb or less to 2GB and they are taking up room, I have no use for them they are too small for my needs and I have seen people selling them on ebay, what use is there nowadays for these drives? They are the standard 5 1/4 size drives.

I've been trying to find a good deal on one that's 500mb or less for a 386 I'm rebuilding. Other than that, I can't thing of a use for one that small, except for to be repurposed as an OS drive for a NAS. Done that one before, but that was a 20gb drive.

I have finished testing all the drives I have and there is about 15 of them and I will be putting them on ebay as a single lot would it be safe to post them if I use a good enough box with lots of padding or is it generally not a good idea as who knows what can happen to a package on its way to the destination more so being delicate devices.

GabrielKnight123 wrote:

I have finished testing all the drives I have and there is about 15 of them and I will be putting them on ebay as a single lot would it be safe to post them if I use a good enough box with lots of padding or is it generally not a good idea as who knows what can happen to a package on its way to the destination more so being delicate devices.

I think the bigger problem will be shipping costs. HDD's are heavy, and to pack properly will need a large box. Anti static bag and foam around each drive to protect against bumps will be fine.

I've gotten plenty of HDD's (usually SCSI) and still work just fine, of course you may get the occasional one die, just last year I got a 10GB and 6GB drive and the 6BG was dead. (annoying as it was the 6 I really wanted) but that's just the gamble with old hardware, I've got faulty RAM, CPU's as well which should travel much better and believe was ok when sent as get refunds easily.