Yeah I'm tired of hearing about them too, especially in the context of asking for help configuring them (geometry, partitioning, etc.)

People run into a ton of setup issues they wouldn't have using period appropriate storage

I switched to IDE disk-on-modules for all my machines. Is that more or less annoying? 😁

Personally, I think CF cards make sense if you:

a) are using DOS or early Win95 class hardware
b) want the ability to switch between multiple operating systems quickly and easily
c) prefer a quiet machine

At the same time, I do understand people who are nostalgic for the crunchy read/write sound of a real HDD. That stuff never bothered me, but I always disliked the high-pitched noise produced by spinning platters. This gets especially annoying if you are using several HDDs with 7500 RPM or higher. For that reason, I will happily use modern SSDs on anything more powerful than a Pentium MMX.

All the mechanical parts tend to be a problem.
If I could I will rid off even the FANs.

The mechanical parts are always the most problematic. Floppy, optical drives, HDDs.
Every of them need to be maintained over time, cleaned, greased, an they still prone to fail.

Even back in the days. I lost the count of the quantum fireball i lost for mechanical issues.
I always hated mechanical HDDs. I'm so happy that we have an alternative today.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-01-23, 19:37:

Personally, I think CF cards make sense if you: […]
Show full quote

Personally, I think CF cards make sense if you:

a) are using DOS or early Win95 class hardware
b) want the ability to switch between multiple operating systems quickly and easily
c) prefer a quiet machine

At the same time, I do understand people who are nostalgic for the crunchy read/write sound of a real HDD. That stuff never bothered me, but I always disliked the high-pitched noise produced by spinning platters. This gets especially annoying if you are using several HDDs with 7500 RPM or higher. For that reason, I will happily use modern SSDs on anything more powerful than a Pentium MMX.

Well, any reason is a good reason to use or not use a CF card. It's great that we have options and nothing stops you from using both simultaneously. It's a personal thing. These old computers don't really serve much purpose other than 3 points: invoking feel, understanding computer history and giving hardware nerds something to nerd out about. 95% of the people on here just play games or benchmark anyway.. catastrophic failure is really not the end of the world and I believe hard drive failure rates are overstated, at least from my personal experience with hard drives that are kept in a normal environment.

What annoys me is that the second you mention mechanical hard drives anywhere today you'll immediately get a CF card slapped in your face as a response. It doesn't even matter how much you say that you specifically want to use a mechanical hard drive.

Now I absolutely don't mind that people tend not to like hard drives, keeps prices low for me who do want to use them 😉

keenerb wrote on 2024-01-23, 19:15:

I switched to IDE disk-on-modules for all my machines. Is that more or less annoying? 😁

Never even heard of this lols, that's cool. How have your experiences been with them?

maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-01-23, 19:15:

Yeah I'm tired of hearing about them too, especially in the context of asking for help configuring them (geometry, partitioning, etc.)

People run into a ton of setup issues they wouldn't have using period appropriate storage

I do think CF cards have a better reputation than they deserve, even if they are useful, cheap and usually work. They can still present problems not found in original hardware, and they are by no means guaranteed to be reliable. CF cards don't have unlimited writes and were not designed to host operating systems.

I see so often someone specifically mentioning they want to use spinning drives

For majority of the cases, you don't want to use either of them and choose a regular SATA SSD via adapter instead. Or yeah, just use IDE DoM.

MyOcSlaps6502 wrote on 2024-01-23, 20:33:

keenerb wrote on 2024-01-23, 19:15:

I switched to IDE disk-on-modules for all my machines. Is that more or less annoying? 😁

Never even heard of this lols, that's cool. How have your experiences been with them?

Seem to have a lot less compatibility issues with DOM. I'd frequently have to try CF card after CF card to find one that would format and boot properly in various machines. Seem speedy enough, and cheap enough in general. Reading them in a desktop machine is trickier though ,since they are female 40 pin connectors...

Small capacity SSD PATA/SATA benchmarks

MyOcSlaps6502 wrote on 2024-01-23, 20:33:

CF cards don't have unlimited writes and were not designed to host operating systems.

This may be true for normal CF cards, which were primarily used for storing photos on digital cameras back in the day.

But there are industrial grade CF cards which are intended for more heavy duty tasks. These tend to be more expensive of course, but also a bit more reliable.

Yeah, I'm on the spinning HDD team as well, they give so much of that authentic retro feel I seek, just like CRTs vs LCDs. But that's maybe because I have accumulated quite a few of them over time, if I had no way to get real vintage HDDs I would be totally open to other storage media.

What really annoys me about the CF crusade is those YouTubers that replace and throw away perfectly working drives because "the HDD is going to die soon". So what? When it dies you can just replace it, it's not like you're going to store any critical data on it right? And if the drive is kept in a non-hostile environment (without lots of dust, heat or moisture), the relatively light use on a retro system means it can live a long time unless it's a model with a known issue (like the rubber stops turning to goo on some old Quantums). In fact, I'd say most of the failures people experience with HDDs are due to things like damage during shipping or just not knowing what kind of abuse it was subjected to by the previous owner.

On the other hand, I wouldn't use drives that are intended for server use (very high-RPM ones for example) due to the annoying noise. My ST-251 on the other hand is loud but pleasing in a certain way, and it just keeps chugging along with no bad sectors.

TheMobRules wrote on 2024-01-23, 20:46:

On the other hand, I wouldn't use drives that are intended for server use (very high-RPM ones for example) due to the annoying noise.

Oh yeah I had an old high rpm drive taken out of a server that made my computer sound like an eternal train horn... that was a little much for me haha

TheMobRules wrote on 2024-01-23, 20:46:

What really annoys me about the CF crusade is those YouTubers that replace and throw away perfectly working drives because "the HDD is going to die soon"

I don't get it when they say this. First of all I think hard drive unreliability is overstated and more so a problem with particular hard drives like you mention. Secondly, vast majority of these youtubers seemingly spend all day long installing windows on fresh systems for benchmarks anyway. A hard drive failure would just force them to do another one of those? I'm all for using solid state if you want to but "the HDD is gonna die anyway" being the reason is kind of silly to me.

Am I weird that I've never really liked the sound of HDDs?

Especially the low-frequency vibrations they produce. Over the years I invested a lot in silent PC cases designed to decouple HDDs from the case and prevent vibration noises.

I use mechanical drives on all but maybe one of my retro machines.
I of course use only faster SSDs on my current gen PCs.
For me it's mainly simply because that is what I have lying around and I don't find the performance increase on older operating systems to be that drastic.
I also don't mind the sounds of the old spinning rust, with the exception of the bearing wine. I can't take that sound, those drives go right the recycler.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-01-23, 21:07:

Am I weird that I've never really liked the sound of HDDs?

Especially the low-frequency vibrations they produce. Over the years I invested a lot in silent PC cases designed to decouple HDDs from the case and prevent vibration noises.

When hard drives were the standard I had no real thoughts about the noise. It was like getting into a car for me, it makes noise but I don't think about it. I like it now because it helps me with immersion and it also is soothing to me unless it's a crazy high pitched beast. If you're not some kind of hard drive geek or the hard drive noise/speed doesn't immerse you, they don't have much to offer. I don't think I'd want my modern laptop to make a bunch of noises at all times, quite happy with it being whisper quiet.

MyOcSlaps6502 wrote on 2024-01-23, 21:18:

When hard drives were the standard I had no real thoughts about the noise. It was like getting into a car for me, it makes noise but I don't think about it. I like it now because it helps me with immersion and it also is soothing to me unless it's a crazy high pitched beast. If you're not some kind of hard drive geek or the hard drive noise/speed doesn't immerse you, they don't have much to offer. I don't think I'd want my modern laptop to make a bunch of noises at all times, quite happy with it being whisper quiet.

It's interesting the different noises we like when it comes to computers.

The computer noises I enjoy are things like floppy drive sounds, quiet to moderate fan sounds, and modem sounds.

Whereas I do not enjoy HDD or CD-ROM noises, or overly loud fans (esp. small high-pitched fans).

I love how quickly I can reinstall Win98 on SSDs, especially if it's attached to a Promise or similar controller.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-01-23, 23:09:

It's interesting the different noises we like when it comes to computers. […]
Show full quote

MyOcSlaps6502 wrote on 2024-01-23, 21:18:

When hard drives were the standard I had no real thoughts about the noise. It was like getting into a car for me, it makes noise but I don't think about it. I like it now because it helps me with immersion and it also is soothing to me unless it's a crazy high pitched beast. If you're not some kind of hard drive geek or the hard drive noise/speed doesn't immerse you, they don't have much to offer. I don't think I'd want my modern laptop to make a bunch of noises at all times, quite happy with it being whisper quiet.

It's interesting the different noises we like when it comes to computers.

The computer noises I enjoy are things like floppy drive sounds, quiet to moderate fan sounds, and modem sounds.

Whereas I do not enjoy HDD or CD-ROM noises, or overly loud fans (esp. small high-pitched fans).

The only HDD sounds I like are the sounds of a MFM/RLL drive firing up, RLL sounds amazing 90% of the time, the other sound is the roar when a raid set of Velociraptor HDDs come to life. (Same for the set of 15k SAS Cheeta HDDs I have, such a cool sound)

Other than that I have no real use case for spinning rust over SSD/CF/SD.

They are going to get more popular as time goes on and people really need help getting the chs etc correct. Magnetic hard drives are going away, even in retro

I never really noticed it here on vogons?
Sure people will recommend them or the SD or SATA options which is ok as if someone is asking about hard drives then maybe they don't know about the alternatives.

Personally for dos only PC's I like spinning rust for c:\ That way the PC sounds "Correct" when booting, CF card for the data, games, etc. The speed boost is nice.
Once PC's aren't limited to 8GB spinning rust is fine. I have spare drives and don't really need the speed boost of SSD's.

If I was having to go buy hard drives I may thing different but even then, have purchased number of SCSI and about 5? <8GB IDE drives and only had 1 DOA drive.