my experience with old WD drives tells me, they'll all die soon enough when put into use, bad sectors will develop more and more until total failure.

Hmm thank you. Well, I'm using 4.2 GB Seagate HDD bought in 1997 in retro computer already more than half year. I'm not using computer with it too often, maybe 5-10 hours a week. So Seagates are better?

I guess if they survived until now, they'll be fine for occasional use.
Even if they have bad sectors, you can partition the drive so it skips the part with the bad sectors, and as along as you make it that it doesn't end up seeking back and forth over those bad sectors by having a good partition before and after it, the drive can last many more years.
Oldest WD drives I got here are a 540MB, 1.2G and 3.2G, of those only the 1.2G drive doesn't have any bad sectors yet. though neither of those drives have seen more than an hour of use the past years.

Ok, and which one should I take out of the two. The newer one from 1998, that have lower number, or 21200 one, that is from mid 1996?

i'd go for the 1996 drive, just to be more period correct. 486s were quite obsolete in 1998.

there's not much point in stressing over reliability beyond having the seller check for bad sectors. just use whatever suits your needs in terms of size/period correctness/noise and better not overpay for something that may or may not last.

I don't think anyone has tested samples large enough to determine whether a certain brand or another is more reliable (except for known duds like the IBM "DeathStar"). Personally only one of many old WD drives I have has failed, while most of the Seagates I've come across were dead... but it doesn't really mean anything.

The thing with used hard drives is that in general you don't know their past history, and given that their lifetime is measured in power-on hours, you should select drives that have been lightly used. Those have higher chances of lasting a long time compared to some drive that has been on 24/7 for years in a server or workstation. The problem is that you generally don't have this information, and older drives without SMART do not report this.

Most of my drives I got from old PCs that were discarded, so I got them for free basically. In general I recommend not paying more than a few bucks and ONLY if the seller can do a surface test to make sure it has no bad sectors.

I also prefer spinning drives over CF or SD, and not necessarily because of the "retro" or "nostalgia" factor. I've had more than enough incompatibilities with dodgy adapters and cards and have accumulated enough old drives so I just use them. If it fails, it goes in the trash or as a test load for power supplies, and I just replace it with another one. It's not like I store valuable data in my retro PCs, everything there can be easily re-installed.

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-03-08, 17:37:

I don't think anyone has tested samples large enough to determine whether a certain brand or another is more reliable (except for known duds like the IBM "DeathStar"). Personally only one of many old WD drives I have has failed, while most of the Seagates I've come across were dead... but it doesn't really mean anything.

for recent big drives, https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html

W.x. wrote on 2021-03-08, 11:20:

Hello, I can take two old Western Digital Caviar disks, both 1.2 GB. Want to use one of them in 486. Not sure which one to take. […]
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Hello, I can take two old Western Digital Caviar disks, both 1.2 GB. Want to use one of them in 486. Not sure which one to take.
I would like to know, what are the differances between them, and which one of them seems to have higher chance to be more reliable.

The disks are WD Caviar 11200 (from 1998)
https://www.amazon.com/WESTERN-DIGITAL-AC1120 … 9/dp/B00BRDG4KE
And WD Caviar 21200 (from 1996)
https://classiccomputershop.eu/Webwinkel-Prod … -retro-90s.html

11200 seems newer one, even despite lower number.
Please, no "use CF adapter" answers.

By now both these drives are really old and if used continuously, both would be wayyy past their expected maximum lifetime I reckon. It will end up being a matter of chance which of the 2 drives has most life left in it (if both drives even work anymore).
If both these drives would be in brand new condition, I think I'd prefer the more modern drive as these tend to also be a bit faster. I'd obviously avoid any known duds or any known bad sellers etc and from where I can see the webpage, the CAVIAR 11200 drive on Amazon seems to be unavailable anyway so you'd have only 1 of the 2 picks anyway.

Short answer: It depends.

I used to be able to read drive model numbers from computer shopper like family circus jokes from Sunday funnies back when I was shopping for a Caviar 280, but I find it gets hard to remember back 30 years for some reason. Is this your fault, Tequila?

First I found this guide to reading part numbers from 2005 forward:
https://i.redd.it/4sg8kvhe1nuy.png

That referred me to the legacy guide:
https://studylib.net/doc/18079990/wd-legacy-m … d-order-numbers

But that still isn't old enough. Bad news when the legacy part number catalog isn't old enough.

The last 4 digits are the capacity, 1200 MB, but the first digit used to indicate the form factor and the number of platters. There should also be some letters to indicate the controller.

The AC21200 would be ATA2, 5200rpm, 1.2GB; MTBF300,000 hours, Buffer Size 128 KB, 2 platters
The AC11200B would be ATA-33, 5200rpm, 1.2GB; MTBF350,000 hours; Buffer Size 256 KB , 1 platter

Just guessing on the platters, but it seems to jive with the MTBF number.

https://www.cnet.com/products/wd-caviar-1-2gb-5400-rpm/
https://www.cnet.com/products/wd-caviar-ac112 … -1-2-gb-ata-33/

* Edit Fixed the platter info, it is 1 & 2, not 2 & 4

http://www.mfarris.com/hard_drives/western_di … al_ac21200.html

Specifications for the WD Caviar AC21200

Recommended Setup Parameters
Cylinders 2484
Heads 16
Sectors/Track 63
Landing Zone 2484
WPC 2484
Formatted Capacity* 1,281 MB
Interface 40-pin EIDE
Actuator Type Rotary Voice Coil
Number of Platters 2
Data Surfaces 4
Number of Heads 4
Bytes Per Sector 512
User Sectors Per Drive 2,503,872
Recording Method GCR 8,9 - PRML
ECC Reed Solomon
Contact Start/Stop Cycles (CSS) 40,000 minimum

http://www.mfarris.com/hard_drives/western_di … al_ac11200.html

Specifications for the WD Caviar AC11200

Recommended Setup Parameters
Cylinders 2484
Heads 16
Sectors/Track 63
Landing Zone 2484
WPC 2484
Jumper Setting Information Ten Pin Drive

Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity* 1,282 MB
Interface 40-pin EIDE
Actuator Type Rotary Voice Coil
Number of Platters 1
Data Surfaces 2
Number of Heads 2
Bytes Per Sector 512
User Sectors Per Drive 2,503,872
Servo Type Embedded
Recording Method GCR 8,9 - PRML
ECC Reed Solomon
Head Park** Automatic
Contact Start/Stop Cycles (CSS) 40,000 minimum

douglar wrote on 2021-03-08, 19:15:

I used to be able to read drive model numbers from computer shopper like family circus jokes from Sunday funnies back when I was […]
Show full quote

I used to be able to read drive model numbers from computer shopper like family circus jokes from Sunday funnies back when I was shopping for a Caviar 280, but I find it gets hard to remember back 30 years for some reason. Is this your fault, Tequila?

First I found this guide to reading part numbers from 2005 forward:
https://i.redd.it/4sg8kvhe1nuy.png

That referred me to the legacy guide:
https://studylib.net/doc/18079990/wd-legacy-m … d-order-numbers

But that still isn't old enough. Bad news when the legacy part number catalog isn't old enough.

It's not much, but at least it's something 😜
https://www.redhill.net.au/d/i.php

Yes, info like the one you looked for will continue to dissipate as time goes on.

I do remember what you mention about the number of platters for these WD drives to be correct

Tetrium wrote on 2021-03-08, 20:55:

It's not much, but at least it's something 😜
https://www.redhill.net.au/d/i.php

Yes, info like the one you looked for will continue to dissipate as time goes on.

I'll try poking around on wayback when I get a chance.

Enjoyed the redhill read. That's some php driven nostalgia for sure. Felt like it was my biography or something. I was in love with those WD1200JB's until I started cheating on them with a Velociraptor.

Reminds me about the stack of MiniScribes in the corner I need to power up one of these days before they turn back into rust.

Personally, I dislike using HDDs in anything.. for the OS drive anyway.

Even in really old laptops and desktops I will use either IDE to SATA or IDE to M.2 adapters so I can use solid state storage.

If the drive is too big for the BIOS, it is easy enough to use an overlay software and then partition for the OS.

Sure some adapters are dodgy but it is plenty easy to find good adapters. Really the only adapters I have had trouble with are the IDE to CF adapters and that pretty much seemed to be due to the CF cards themselves as a different brand card worked just fine.

I have more than a file cabinet drawer full of old HDDs.. most, if all not all, will never be used except for maybe storage.

douglar wrote on 2021-03-08, 21:29:

I'll try poking around on wayback when I get a chance. […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote on 2021-03-08, 20:55:

It's not much, but at least it's something 😜
https://www.redhill.net.au/d/i.php

Yes, info like the one you looked for will continue to dissipate as time goes on.

I'll try poking around on wayback when I get a chance.

Enjoyed the redhill read. That's some php driven nostalgia for sure. Felt like it was my biography or something. I was in love with those WD1200JB's until I started cheating on them with a Velociraptor.

Reminds me about the stack of MiniScribes in the corner I need to power up one of these days before they turn back into rust.

It's a nice read. It's not very technical though but at least it's basically from that era and not just something written recently about that era.

My guess is it will be hard to find the kind of info you are looking for, if only because back then even this kind of information was often simply never made available on the net. Even in the year 2000 many people still didn't have internet (or had just dial-up) and this was 5 years, 10 year or even longer after certain drives had already been phased out.

Perhaps in some cases there would even be a better chance at obtaining certain info from paper archives but tech companies are perhaps not the best at maintaining such physical archives.

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-03-08, 17:37:

I also prefer spinning drives over CF or SD, and not necessarily because of the "retro" or "nostalgia" factor. I've had more than enough incompatibilities with dodgy adapters and cards and have accumulated enough old drives so I just use them. If it fails, it goes in the trash or as a test load for power supplies, and I just replace it with another one. It's not like I store valuable data in my retro PCs, everything there can be easily re-installed.

Same here. I've had less than five hdds fail on me as a home user/hobbiest since 1990.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-03-09, 07:46:

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-03-08, 17:37:

I also prefer spinning drives over CF or SD, and not necessarily because of the "retro" or "nostalgia" factor. I've had more than enough incompatibilities with dodgy adapters and cards and have accumulated enough old drives so I just use them. If it fails, it goes in the trash or as a test load for power supplies, and I just replace it with another one. It's not like I store valuable data in my retro PCs, everything there can be easily re-installed.

Same here. I've had less than five hdds fail on me as a home user/hobbiest since 1990.

I had no hdd failures between 1994 and 2019. Since 2019 I have had 5 drives fail - all relatively new. Only old drives that failed testing were bought in scrap lots, so were expected 😀

Any old hard drives, regardless of model or type can be a gamble. Generally I've found reliability of old hard drives to be quite good, but that's all assuming they've been handled well and stored correctly - which if you're buying from somebody else then you just don't know this for sure. It's also assuming they don't have any flaws that leave them failure prone.

I've had more failures with Conner, Seagate & Hitachi branded drives over the years, than I've had overall with WD.

I still have a 21-year-old Maxtor 200GB IDE HDD that has been running practically 24/7 for those 21 years. Still going strong and the number of reallocated sectors/uncorrectable sectors hasn't increased from the present 6 total for over a decade.

I have a bunch of <300 MB drives that worked fine one week and died the next. Conner, WD, Seagate, doesn't matter.
Quantums are complete crap (click of death), Maxtors either die immediately or work fine for years. I only have a single IBM ESDI drive that works.
I wouldn't buy drives from resellers because they are tossed around for weeks in the recycling center before they are sold.
Try buying from a local collector who tested the drive himself and pick it up yourself so it won't get damaged during shipping.

I've had one drive fail on me in all my years of retro computing (perhaps more but then I can't remember atm). It was a (iirc) 20GB IBM drive. Really kinda sad, it was fine the previous day and the next day when I booted up the rig, the drive was like "clik clik clik clik clik clik" endlessly. Troubleshooted but it was dead.
Kinda sad because it was a relatively quiet drive as well and I didn't have nearly as much parts as would later have.

The drive had already been used, I hadn't bought it new btw.

PTherapist wrote on 2021-03-09, 11:08:

Any old hard drives, regardless of model or type can be a gamble. Generally I've found reliability of old hard drives to be quite good, but that's all assuming they've been handled well and stored correctly - which if you're buying from somebody else then you just don't know this for sure. It's also assuming they don't have any flaws that leave them failure prone.

I've had more failures with Conner, Seagate & Hitachi branded drives over the years, than I've had overall with WD.

I still have a 21-year-old Maxtor 200GB IDE HDD that has been running practically 24/7 for those 21 years. Still going strong and the number of reallocated sectors/uncorrectable sectors hasn't increased from the present 6 total for over a decade.

The vast majority of (older) drives that I own now are drives I personally screwed out of trashed computers. Some were inside second hand PCs I bought in second hand stores and those would usually come with the case. Harddrives inside a PC are generally speaking relatively safe. If only because it (to a large degree) prevents them from getting physically mistreated.