These old Conner drives are like tanks. They “take a lick’en and keep on tick’en”.
I never thought much of these drives but they have proven me wrong.
I compared to an IBM hard drive of the same time period and capacity and the Conner drive WON in performance benchmarks.
I was in SHOCK !……
I Never would have guessed it because I alway thought IBM made the Best Hard drives.
I Still Prefer IBM Hard drives but for Clickity sound the Conner sounds pretty Cool.

Hmmmm, yeah those old Connors get silly money on eBay, not because they are good, but because working ones are rare and pre-1990 equipment had very limited HDD tables and they are more famous for working with them than the 2 dozen minority brands that are too much trouble to search for.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-16, 16:46:

I know hypercard is that hypertext database doohickey, but went looking in case anyone made a hardcard for Macs they called hype […]
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Shagittarius wrote on 2024-03-16, 16:13:

The first time I ever saw a Mac at school was also the first time I ever heard an HDD. It was a Mac SE, when they were new, and man I remember the sound it made was so cool. I asked the librarian what made that sound and she said "It's the Hypercard". Lol, anyways I don't know what type of drive that was but it was my first and favorite HDD sound.

I know hypercard is that hypertext database doohickey, but went looking in case anyone made a hardcard for Macs they called hypercard or something similar. Nothing showed up for that, but I came across an early Mac HDD discussion on Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comment … released_apple/
which seems to indicate that it might have had a Quantum.

Thanks for the link, it was a good read. Yeah whatever drive was in that SE it made the most wonderful sounds. I would call it squeaky or maybe the sound of a couple plastic type fabrics rubbing on each other, kind of squishy. It wasn't a knocking sound like most HDDs make. It was more of a 'seeking' kind of sound, sort of like when a CD-ROM is first inserted, not the spin up but the seek of the head.

Edit: Sorry about the non-IDE talk, didn't mean to get off topic.

Somehow I hadn't noticed that thread before. Of all the drives I've recorded for my YT channel, my favourites are:

- NEC D5126
- KALOK KL-320
- WD CAVIAR 2850

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-11-05, 18:03:

ST-157A

Grzyb wrote on 2021-11-09, 10:27:

I only accept the sound of stepper drives 😜
So, if speaking about IDE stuff, it would be the early ones, like ST-157A or WD95044-A

Yes, pure nostalgia 😀
My first HDD ever was used ~$40 Western Digital WD93044-A. Slow seeks, slow transfers, clickety-clack, but otherwise bulletproof. Just barely enough to hold one-two good 386 games at a time :]

I might have possibly unearthed a Caviar with an identity crisis 🤣.

For the record - the bottom sticker is the actual drive that identifies in the BIOS - WDAC2850F. The purple 2700 one was found after peeling the 2850 one off.

As for its contents - MS DOS 6.22 + Win95 (not sure if B or C) and Ontrack Disk Manager.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-03-19, 21:58:

I might have possibly unearthed a Caviar with an identity crisis lol. […]
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I might have possibly unearthed a Caviar with an identity crisis 🤣.

For the record - the bottom sticker is the actual drive that identifies in the BIOS - WDAC2850F. The purple 2700 one was found after peeling the 2850 one off.

As for its contents - MS DOS 6.22 + Win95 (not sure if B or C) and Ontrack Disk Manager.

Factory repaired/refurbished unit maybe ?

Love the sound of this NEC MFM drive....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30Y5nD_0Mic

Miniscribe 20 MB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xzEVNBZMSc
Here you see the stepper motor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9qOkOvBUCI

With stepper motor.
I got a SCSI model.

Disruptor wrote on 2024-03-29, 02:52:

Miniscribe 20 MB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xzEVNBZMSc Here you see the stepper motor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9q […]
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Miniscribe 20 MB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xzEVNBZMSc
Here you see the stepper motor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9qOkOvBUCI

With stepper motor.
I got a SCSI model.

I had one of those and yes, that makes "nice" sound.

Just remembered one I have to be on the lookout for in my stuff somewhere, it's actually an unusually tall, "full height" 3.5" drive that was 200MB capacity so was maybe a quite expensive drive when new. That one has some shaka-shaka-shaka brrrrrrrrrrt chunka-chunka type noises.

I tried out a 7200 RPM 68-pin Ultra SCSI drive recently, a Fujitsu MAH3182MP, I think it was 18GB. It had a really nice sound. It's hard to describe but it sounded different from a typical ATA drive in a nice way. Maybe a higher power motor or something? It spins up and down really quickly. I also tried a 10k RPM SCSI drive but the higher pitch drove me crazy. Frankly I'd probably like a 5400 RPM drive even more.

I ran Windows 98 on it through a Tekram SCSI adapter, but for some reason, Windows 98 seemed less stable on the SCSI drive even though the drive itself passed SMART and every other test I had. I went back to a Samsung Spinpoint which sounds okay but was much quieter, so less retro noises, lol.