As with any other type of component, there is no "the best", it depends on your use case and to a certain degree on what other components you pair it with and which OS you run. You're not finding it because it does not - and cannot - exist in the simple form that you state.

Ok, then i try to make a list for every year, IDE and scsi interface every vendor's fastest and another list with biggest hard disk drives.
For gaming higg end pc, and workstations, DOS, Windows95, windows98, windows xp

How many lists do you want to make? And to what end?

Rather than trying to hit a square peg into a round hole, why not just try a qualitative appraisal instead? Something like this:
https://redhill.net.au/d/i.php

This site sadly partial.

I build high end gaming and workstation pc-s from 1980's to 2015 with time correct parts.
That is the reason, why.
For high end cpu/motherboard/graphic card/sound card best choose a fastest hard drive, with a biggest space.
An entry class hdd is slow, and has few space for programs.
Very important choose the fastest and biggest hard drive from that year for best fun.
Redhill is partially sadly

envagyok wrote on 2025-08-11, 08:12:

I need to make list of which ide/scsi hdd type is the best per year from 1990 to 2005 as speed and as capacity.
I try to find complete list from net, but no luck, only partial infos find over google ai, wikipedia.

Thanks to everyone to make a complete list.

Three things that are tough about this:

• what was desirable at the time might not be desirable today because of longevity issues
• At some point around 2003, capacity and performance started to diverge for ATA drives
• Laptop and desktop IDE drives were separate for a long time

Here's an ATA list--

1989 Seagate ST251A (40MB, 28ms ATA-0 work horse)
1990 Conner CP-3084 (80 MB 64KB cache , 17ms, 3400 RPM, ATA-1 )
1991 Conner CP-3204 (200MB)
1992 Conner CP3544A (540MB, 256KB Cache, 12ms, 4500RPM )
1993 High end IDE market stalled for a bit
1994 Micropolis Taurus 4110A 1GB (ATA-2)
1995 Quantum Fireball 1GB (5400 RPM ATA-3)
1996 Quantum Fireball 1.2GB
1997 Quantum Fireball ST 6.4GB (ATA-4)
1998 Quantum Fireball EL 10.3GB (512KB Cache, ATA-5)
1999 Quantum Fireball Plus KA 18.2GB (7200 RPM)
2000 Quantum Fireball Plus AS 60 GB (2MB Cache, GMR Heads, fluid dynamic bearings, ATA-6 interface)
2001 Western Digital Caviar JB 100GB (8MB Cache)
2001 Western Digital Caviar JB 120GB (8MB Cache)
2002 Capacity and performance start to diverge
2003 Western Digital Raptor 36GB (10K RPM)
2004 Sata Era Starts

I did some research for my dual Pentium II workstation setup using only period specific parts for 1997.

On HDD option I found out that IBM DGHS COMP IEC-950 (18GB, 3.5-inch, 10000 RPM, Ultra160 80-pin) SCSI drive was the quickest/best you could get. It was launched in end of 1997, but products only shipped start of 1998 so it was really on the limit of being 1997 period-correct.

In those years best - worst? Not sure. More like good - not so great - yikes

I think high end Seagate and WD were the leaders at that time for pretty much any price range of HDD, while on the opposite side of the spectrum there was stuff like the value oriented Quantum "poof" fireball and the IBM (Hitachi?) "Click of death" Deskstar ((Deathstar 😀). As time went on this evened out with cheaper brands getting better.

bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-08-11, 15:59:

In those years best - worst? Not sure. More like good - not so great - yikes

I think high end Seagate and WD were the leaders at that time for pretty much any price range of HDD, while on the opposite side of the spectrum there was stuff like the value oriented Quantum "poof" fireball and the IBM (Hitachi?) "Click of death" Deskstar ((Deathstar 😀). As time went on this evened out with cheaper brands getting better.

Fireball had different tiers. I tried to quote the high end halo tiers that were first to market with new technologies, not the value tiers that you find in OEM systems.

The Seagate medalist drives were nice but they were not really market leaders and I don't see a lot of them still running.

I always had a soft spot for the Caviar drives, but so many of them sound like metal lathes when I power them on 30 years later that I have a hard time recommending them for a retro build.

Quantum had the rubber stoppers that got sticky. IBM drives from the early 2k period were infamous.

Storage overview:
https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/hard_disks.php

Page 151 is a good reference for 1994
https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/199409_Byte … el_Free_PCs.pdf

IDE vs SCSI 1997
https://www.itprotoday.com/cloud-computing/sc … the-differences

Nuts and bolts:
https://vtda.org/books/Computing/Hardware/SCS … face_2nd_Ed.pdf

envagyok wrote on 2025-08-11, 08:12:

I need to make list of which ide/scsi hdd type is the best per year from 1990 to 2005 as speed and as capacity.
I try to find complete list from net, but no luck, only partial infos find over google ai, wikipedia.

Thanks to everyone to make a complete list.

My 1986 era Compaq Deskpro 386 had its original hard drive a 160mb mfm 5 1/4 full height drive.

There were always mega capacity, mega expensive drives available early on.

Very few of these types of drives would have sold in their era, some were proprietary, most are quite rare and unreliable at this point.

I would use what works and what’s at hand and not get into niche high end equipment.

A more interesting question is why was the 40mb capacity IDE (XT .& AT) manufactured for such an extraordinarily long time, being technically available in their era 80’s but unpopular in the Winchester era as dos 3 didn’t like that size and only stopping manufacturer in 1994, there are indications that there may have even been a batch in 1995, gotta wonder WTF kept buying those things?
40mb drives only became extremely popular when they were already obsolete tech, and they kept making them several years after that.

Hmm interesting :
Quantum Solid State Drives
Various makers, notably Quantum (now part of Maxtor) make a fairly extensive range of solid state disc drives — that is, drives with no moving parts at all. Essentially, they are a hard drive-shaped box full of RAM chips with a SCSI connector bolted on. The cost (of course) is astronomical, and the performance is phenomenal.

There are both volatile and non-volatile versions in sizes up to several gigabyte. Access times are near enough to zero as makes no difference, and data transfer rates are limited only by the SCSI bus.

No, we don't sell them. We don't know anyone that could afford one!

When was this unique hardware?

rmay635703 wrote on 2025-08-11, 16:42:

I would use what works and what’s at hand and not get into niche high end equipment.

A more interesting question is why was the 40mb capacity IDE (XT .& AT) manufactured for such an extraordinarily long time

Amen to that. Finding 30 year old spinning rust that's reliable is hard enough, much less cherry picking high end models than may have had short MTBF ratings. Back in the day, that dude you knew with a BBS might go out and buy an expensive storage subsystem, most end user enthusiasts didn't geek out about storage so much as long as they didn't run out of space every week. You could always just add a second drive. Smart drive was capable of hiding performance discrepancies pretty well for anything +/- one generation anyway. Sure, if you were still running a 28ms drive in 1994 it would have started to feel slow, but it was already about 2 years past its expiration date anyway, it is was probably a miracle that it wasn't dead yet so go buy something 10x larger and 3x faster already! So while hard drive brands had their fan boys, they were just not as important as CPU, Graphics, or Sound. That micropolis enterprise drive wasn't going to give you more FPS in your favorite game any more than a $2000 CAD card would help you play DOOM.

p.s. I always assumed that the 40MB hard drives stuck around so long because that's all you really needed for DOS + 2 apps.

envagyok wrote on 2025-08-11, 17:36:

Hmm interesting : Quantum Solid State Drives Various makers, notably Quantum (now part of Maxtor) make a fairly extensive range […]
Show full quote

Hmm interesting :
Quantum Solid State Drives
Various makers, notably Quantum (now part of Maxtor) make a fairly extensive range of solid state disc drives — that is, drives with no moving parts at all. Essentially, they are a hard drive-shaped box full of RAM chips with a SCSI connector bolted on. The cost (of course) is astronomical, and the performance is phenomenal.

There are both volatile and non-volatile versions in sizes up to several gigabyte. Access times are near enough to zero as makes no difference, and data transfer rates are limited only by the SCSI bus.

No, we don't sell them. We don't know anyone that could afford one!

When was this unique hardware?

The attachment Screenshot_20250811_193448_Chrome.jpg is no longer available

I remember seeing those crazy solid state drives in the industry rags. They seemed like science fiction at the time. I really wanted one.

p.s. Maxtor was acquired by Seagate Technology June 30, 2006