https://www.hdsentinel.com/storageinfo_detail … MSUNG%20SV0802E

https://www.hdsentinel.com/storageinfo_detail … MSUNG%20SP0842N

You can use them ... the former is ata100 and latter ata133

Yep ! I would check them with CrystalDisk Info tool and see how many hours they have, got a few from old TIVO boxes that had less than 12,000 hours on them (one only 3200). Knowing the hours can help knowing one aspect of how much time they may have left... Most drives go 20-30,000 or more w/o issue and some 50,000+.... as long as no V. spikes or dropped/moved while powered on.....

tere are traps, hdd manufaturers made special firmwares for manufacturers of various video recorders, some required special command to initialize, others required manually waking up/starting the drive etc, others simply used ATA passwords

https://datarecovery.com/rd/how-to-unlock-dvr … v-dish-network/

Today I bought a 16 camera port security DVR for ~$10 at a thrift store (after looking up the model and seeing it has an OK HD and they give 3 days to return on electrical).
The drive has 16k hours and CrystalDisk says it is GOOD. Is not a something for old computers as a 2TB WD SATA but good for storage, it had two "non windows" partitions (one small and one huge).
Easily removed them under Win7 and made 2 x 1TB NTFS parts, works just fine so will go into a ext. sata bax....added: used on ebay with "proof" of tested are about $40+ with shipping so no a bad bargain at $10 😁

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-09-28, 12:13:

tere are traps, hdd manufaturers made special firmwares for manufacturers of various video recorders, some required special command to initialize, others required manually waking up/starting the drive etc, others simply used ATA passwords

https://datarecovery.com/rd/how-to-unlock-dvr … v-dish-network/

That topic reminds me of the old Xbox and its HDD..
I heard (read) that old Xboxes were being being gutted for their HDDs.
They were small, about 20 GB IDE, but there was demand in that country. It also had a lot of XP machines, still.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-10-02, 00:28:

That topic reminds me of the old Xbox and its HDD.. I heard (read) that old Xboxes were being being gutted for their HDDs. They […]
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rasz_pl wrote on 2023-09-28, 12:13:

tere are traps, hdd manufaturers made special firmwares for manufacturers of various video recorders, some required special command to initialize, others required manually waking up/starting the drive etc, others simply used ATA passwords

https://datarecovery.com/rd/how-to-unlock-dvr … v-dish-network/

That topic reminds me of the old Xbox and its HDD..
I heard (read) that old Xboxes were being being gutted for their HDDs.
They were small, about 20 GB IDE, but there was demand in that country. It also had a lot of XP machines, still.

yep ! I gutted a few 10, 20 and 40Gb's off Xboxes. Problem was that because kids would move/bump/whatever those old Xboxes (or PS2's too) while turned on, many of those drives suffered premature failure.
Only about 1/2 the hd's were still good when I was doing it.

sadly, to get one off an old xbox, you have to hot-swap it to a pc, then disable/clear the ATA locking.

Ive seen firmware locks on Seagate drives that require a certain motherboard or controller or what ever it sees in the recorder to work.
That was on a set top DVD/HD recorder from wayback, but for most of them theyre just normal hard drives.

Put it into a PC and see what it sees.

Sorry for the late reply and thank you for all the replies and useful information,

I can't use Crystal Disk Info because my main PC doesn't have an IDE port and their website says it's not for Windows 98, is there any Windows 98 based software that you may know of?

This afternoon I tried both of the hard drives in the PC, I was able to install Windows 98 on them and they both seem to work fine, the only thing is it felt like they were running slow but that may just be because the last time I used a Windows 98 PC was back in 2005.

Should I open a new topic with non HDD related questions or should I stick to the same topic?

Hmm I have used Crystaldisk on IDE drives many times but under XP or Win7 and up. It even works with USB to IDE drive adapters. Will look for a Win9x version/equal but if you are running a IDE drive on a non IDE motherboard how are you doing it?
NO, no reason to open a new topic about same problem. Curious what motherboard you are using ?

Horun wrote on 2023-10-01, 22:51:

Today I bought a 16 camera port security DVR for ~$10 at a thrift store (after looking up the model and seeing it has an OK HD and they give 3 days to return on electrical).
The drive has 16k hours and CrystalDisk says it is GOOD. Is not a something for old computers as a 2TB WD SATA but good for storage, it had two "non windows" partitions (one small and one huge).
Easily removed them under Win7 and made 2 x 1TB NTFS parts, works just fine so will go into a ext. sata bax....added: used on ebay with "proof" of tested are about $40+ with shipping so no a bad bargain at $10 😁

You always stumble on the good stuff at thrift stores, lucky you. 😉

Another potential source of cheap SATA HDDs consists of cable TV settop boxes with DVR functionality. A lot of the newer ones do not have a hard disk (the DVR functionality is cloud-based), but older 4K models from the likes of Cisco and Samsung, for example, often have completely standard 2TB SATA HDDs .

Fair warnings, though, that
a) these units often have relatively high power-on hours AND load cycle counts
b) a secure torx screwdriver is required to dissassemble at least some settop box models

I took a few chances and I got lucky a couple of times when I stumbled upon a few low-use units that probably sat in storage for years.