By the time 4GB drives came around, the drives were already much quieter. The only late drives I really remember that are noisy were quantum drives, and they were a BAD kind of noisy, much so, that most of my quantum drives have now died. Many also had a terrible noise just spinning the platter that you'd want ear plugs after a while. They were trash quickly dying drives then and many died just sitting.

I think the kind of drives you are looking for are 200MB or less. I have an 80MB drive with a stepper actuator. I may have a few more, mostly odd-balls that are similar. I didn't keep many of my drives unfortunately. I think all my drives in the gigabyte range will be relatively quiet, or noisy because they are on their last legs.

Firstly what system are you wanting it for OP?

Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups!

I have plenty of Quatum BigFoots still completely operational and in use in XT Turbo and a couple in use in my 386DX25 systems.

And I've seen plenty of the bigfoots die, many because of age just sitting there. Quantums are known for unreliability from their poor manufacturing. I would not wish the OP to gamble on acquiring one. I can dig around to see if I have any left, but the prognosis is not good.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-26, 19:21:

And I've seen plenty of the bigfoots die, many because of age just sitting there. Quantums are known for unreliability from their poor manufacturing. I would not wish the OP to gamble on acquiring one. I can dig around to see if I have any left, but the prognosis is not good.

YOUR mileage may vary. Mine I'm pretty happy with then in MY systems for the last 7 years or so.
A couple of days ago I did a full installation of Xandros Linux 3 Deluxe to show have you can give it a Win9x look n feel. The installation went without a hitch and on reboot come up to the GUI login prompt without issue, logged in an in about 10mins had the Xandros desktop looking win9x. Go see the thread using XP as year main OS thread if you don't believe me.

FWIW the loudest "modern" disk I've ever owned was the Maxtor DiamondMax 80: no comparison to the "classics" but still made satisfying spinups 😁

2, 4 and 6 gb quantum fireballs are relatively reliable and more or less noisy. (50% survival rate)
4-10 gb seagates are silent, but less reliable (20% survival rate, surviving specimens having mbytes of bad sectors)
wd caviars... well yeah, i havent seen any working model but i had like 20 of them, all of them died on me

MarkP wrote on 2022-11-26, 20:55:

the3dfxdude wrote on 2022-11-26, 19:21:

And I've seen plenty of the bigfoots die, many because of age just sitting there. Quantums are known for unreliability from their poor manufacturing. I would not wish the OP to gamble on acquiring one. I can dig around to see if I have any left, but the prognosis is not good.

YOUR mileage may vary. Mine I'm pretty happy with then in MY systems for the last 7 years or so.
A couple of days ago I did a full installation of Xandros Linux 3 Deluxe to show have you can give it a Win9x look n feel. The installation went without a hitch and on reboot come up to the GUI login prompt without issue, logged in an in about 10mins had the Xandros desktop looking win9x. Go see the thread using XP as year main OS thread if you don't believe me.

That's good you have a working quantum. But there is no reason to make this into a conversation about believing you. If you saw in my message you replied to, I said I could dig and see what working ones I have left. I probably have a working one right now too! I stuck them into computers years ago and gave away the remaining working ones a long time ago cause I just don't have room for stuff I can't use. I can't be sure where they ended up. The ones I kept, some have died because of their known defect in the actuator stoppers disintegrating. They just do. That is why I've mentioned it is a gamble with old drives at this point. I've probably had 50 quantum drives from that time period. The reason why I got them is 25 years ago some companies out here decided after failures just replace ALL of their quantum drives. They were not good. Their drives of this size from around 97 or later is where the problems got bad for them. Maybe their earlier drives are better, because that is when they were popular. After then, there is a reason quantum exited the hard drive business completely.

If you want a vintage drive to make some noise, my advice is to try not pay any money for it. If you get one you like, great, but be ready since they could have a really bad whine from that era, or really that they aren't really the head seeking noise you are hoping for because they are too new and pretty quiet. Or get one from someone you know and get a good deal for it and tested it for you. It's not only quantum that had bad manufacturing runs either so pick your poison. Your best luck will probably be to start looking as small size as possible. Maybe there could be a 1-2GB out there from hopefully a reputable model. But don't pay any money for it.

I remember Maxtor drives being remarkably noisy for how modern/large they were.

🤣 what about this it looks pretty rad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3 … eature=emb_logo

Error 0x7CF wrote on 2022-11-28, 03:31:

I remember Maxtor drives being remarkably noisy for how modern/large they were.

Yeah I've a 2GB diamondmax with a pretty satisfying seek sound

Conners were a bit noisy. All my Acorn Risc systems have them.

I have a few Seagate medalist drives that sound very satisfying 🤣 one of them is a 6.4 gig st36423A. Also have a 13 gig version that sounds the same. Both have been very reliable.

Seagate ST310... series (the one with all rubber outside) have very low rotation noise but very very nice seeking sound.

MarkP wrote on 2022-11-28, 04:39:

Conners were a bit noisy. All my Acorn Risc systems have them.

+1 They have a different (and nicer IMHO) sound then most drives.
https://youtu.be/_3SLadufyx0
But as also mentioned above are older/smaller capacity at around 400MB not GB.

What I do on my builds is have spinning rust (no real brand preference) as the primary disk where the OS is installed giving me the authentic sound during boot.
Games/Everything else is on CF/SDD or whatever as one I'm playing the game I don't notice the lack of HDD sound not to mention speed and reliability benefits.

Truth is any hard drive is a gamble, newer drives may have been stored in terrible locations, older drives may have been dormant in server rooms with perfect conditions. I wouldn't get too worried over brands/models/etc anymore.

chinny22 wrote on 2022-11-28, 13:08:

+1 They have a different (and nicer IMHO) sound then most drives. https://youtu.be/_3SLadufyx0 But as also mentioned above are o […]
Show full quote

MarkP wrote on 2022-11-28, 04:39:

Conners were a bit noisy. All my Acorn Risc systems have them.

+1 They have a different (and nicer IMHO) sound then most drives.
https://youtu.be/_3SLadufyx0
But as also mentioned above are older/smaller capacity at around 400MB not GB.

What I do on my builds is have spinning rust (no real brand preference) as the primary disk where the OS is installed giving me the authentic sound during boot.
Games/Everything else is on CF/SDD or whatever as one I'm playing the game I don't notice the lack of HDD sound not to mention speed and reliability benefits.

Truth is any hard drive is a gamble, newer drives may have been stored in terrible locations, older drives may have been dormant in server rooms with perfect conditions. I wouldn't get too worried over brands/models/etc anymore.

I certainly agree. Using anything old is a gamble. Keeping disk images of the OSs is a good idea as well just in case the spinning rust drives go tits up.

HDD reliability after 20+ years is a pipe dream.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-11-28, 15:10:

HDD reliability after 20+ years is a pipe dream.

The ~20 of them which I still have in active duty, error free, would disagree with you here

maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-11-28, 15:30:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-11-28, 15:10:

HDD reliability after 20+ years is a pipe dream.

The ~20 of them which I still have in active duty, error free, would disagree with you here

Sounds like you've beaten the odds. 😉

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-11-28, 17:25:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-11-28, 15:30:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-11-28, 15:10:

HDD reliability after 20+ years is a pipe dream.

The ~20 of them which I still have in active duty, error free, would disagree with you here

Sounds like you've beaten the odds. 😉

There are certainly around 10 drives in the machines sitting next to me all in functional states that old here. More are in storage. Reliability is just gonna be hard to know from any manufacturer at this point. This is why I suggested it's best to keep any potential cost down to a minimum and just try. I think pretty much all of these I got for free over many years. Actually I got a box with some that old in the last year, also for free. Some still worked, and some didn't. But ones that do work, they really do keep ticking along, I even have some in long time active duty.