Thank you for all answers.
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.
It will be from seller, that handled them as retro components, so should been handled good and also will be surface tested. But not sure, if he have them stored from year 1998, maybe, it was used by someone else before, and in this case, I will not find out.
To the 21-year-old Maxtor 200 GB: Well, you eighter think 20 GB. Because I'm sure, in year 2000, even 20 GB was considered big. Even in anandtech reviews from that era, they are using 20 GB harddrive as test setup. Later the year, 30 GB HDD start to be mid-range standard, but maximum what I remember, have been 60 and 75 GB harddisks from that era, possible even in early 2001. They were just those Plenty platters version, like 4 or 5 platters. 200GB harddrives was more like 2005 and 2006 stuff. I remember it, because just in 2006 I had big upgrade for computer, and I've included also very good WD2500KS - 250GB hard drive, and I took one of those larger ones available. It served really good, till 2010, where 1 TB version was more like standard. I have it till today, also it was SATA/IDE combined disk, so I am using it from time to time because of that it can be connected to IDE interface of older motherboards. Interesting note is, that 1 TB WD green died after 6 years. So 1 TB from 2010 is already dead. I was quite dissapointed, as I took green version for 5400 RPM, and with only 2 platters, so it will last long. But nope, all my old harddrives out-lasted it. Even Maxtor Diamondmax 8, 30 GB , that I have from 2003, is still in use in retro computer. And IBM deskstar 30 GB, bought in 2001, is also operetional, using it from time to time as back up, and with all original files from that era. Been used as primary disk for few years, than till 2006 in retro computer, than as transport disk and for backups.