I don't think this is an easy question to answer, but for the mid to late 90's I think the best drives available were generally IBM UltraStars. They came in a variety of SCSI flavors and were quite popular among high-end UNIX vendors like SGI and Sun because of their speed and reliability. You really couldn't go wrong with an UltraStar.

8086 era: SCSI
286 era: for compatible with other systems SCSI / for low cost go for IDE (16 bit IDE controllers are easy to find)
386 era: Same as the 286
486/5x86 era: Same as the 286
P5/K6 era: IDE
P6/K7 era: IDE or PCI SATA card
Pentium 4/Athlon XP (S423/S478) era: IDE or PCI SATA card

some later Athlon XP motherboards do have sata150.. Then i should go for that option..

with SCSI its easier to swap data out with your older systems..

Dont go for RLL of MFM (way to expensive now, and limited of the small disk sizes)

In my Time-Machine I go with SATA through either IDE<>SATA adapters for smaller drives (under 128GB) or PCI SATA controllers for larger drives. Works really well and I use drive bays that allow you pulling out the HDD. Slap it into a USB HDD dock for easy data transfer.

I also like CF cards and Micro drives. Nifty little gadgets for quick data exchange.

Robin4 wrote:

some later Athlon XP motherboards do have sata150.. Then i should go for that option..

I read a bunch of horror stories about data corruption with the onboard SATA controller (an early Sil3112) on my ABit nForce2 board, so I always avoided using it. I don't know if that reputation extends to all motherboards of the period, and of course, it might be exaggerated. Still, I tend to worry about early implementations of a new interface like SATA.
I'd use an addon card unless I was really sure the onboard was solid, or it's just not storing anything very important.

That said, I personally ran into a corruption problem with the nForce2's PATA interface, so that's not bulletproof either. It was solved by just using the Microsoft driver, not nVidia's. Never had a problem using the MS driver.

Robin4 wrote:

8086 era: SCSI 286 era: for compatible with other systems SCSI / for low cost go for IDE (16 bit IDE controllers are easy to fin […]
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8086 era: SCSI
286 era: for compatible with other systems SCSI / for low cost go for IDE (16 bit IDE controllers are easy to find)
386 era: Same as the 286
486/5x86 era: Same as the 286
P5/K6 era: IDE
P6/K7 era: IDE or PCI SATA card
Pentium 4/Athlon XP (S423/S478) era: IDE or PCI SATA card

Wouldn't a CF-to-IDE adapter be the way to go for older systems? (Do they have CF-to-SCSI adapters?)

CF to IDE is awesome. And PCI SATA cards (make sure it has a RAID BIOS for cheap eBay items) is also awesome. I use both in my MS-DOS Time-Machine.

shamino wrote:

I read a bunch of horror stories about data corruption with the onboard SATA controller (an early Sil3112) on my ABit nForce2 board, so I always avoided using it. I don't know if that reputation extends to all motherboards of the period, and of course, it might be exaggerated. Still, I tend to worry about early implementations of a new interface like SATA.
I'd use an addon card unless I was really sure the onboard was solid, or it's just not storing anything very important.

First gen SATA1 (pre-AHCI) is extremely buggy. Every chipset has its quirks like not working with SATA2 or 3 HDs (cough VIA), or no 4k sector support. Yet, all those drives work perfectly fine with the onboard PATA ports with adapter on the same machine! The best appears to be the Intel ICH5 SB.

I also avoid the RAID ROM cards from that generation since they tend to NOT support optical drives and many lack proper JBOD/non-RAID operation. (both VIA and Silicon Image were notorious for that) I'd honestly stick with the SATA2 add-on PCI cards. The only tradeoff is that they lack Windows 9x support.

For those wondering why Silicon Image seems cursed, they can be traced back to CMD Technologies and their buggy data corrupting PCI IDE controllers. 😜

Resurrecting this thread

Is Quantum HDD so much popular in then? I have four Quantum Fireball lct. Are they affordable?

LCT stands for low cost so yes, these should be cheaper than the AX and other types. I had and still have a few of these LCTs, they have decent performance even now. Maybe their meantime-between-failures is higher than that of the pro models. Not a very serious issue.

Jolaes76 wrote:

LCT stands for low cost so yes, these should be cheaper than the AX and other types. I had and still have a few of these LCTs, they have decent performance even now. Maybe their meantime-between-failures is higher than that of the pro models. Not a very serious issue.

The Quantum Fireball LCT HDD with Philips chip are not so durable, I have one Fireball LCT 5.1 GB with Philips chip it was burned. Meanwhile other drive using Panasonic chip still stronger (I have Fireball LCT HP OEM 10.4. GB with Panasonic chip still spinning). Meanwhile two other using Lucent (earlier version) I don't know due early revision, one still spinning and another dead with unknown reason.

Thanks for the insight. I do not have my drives in front of me, but probably they have the Philips chips. All these drives run over 500 days and only one of them has bad sectors. Maybe mine are the exception, then...

SCSI has ~ALWAYS~ been the fastest and most reliable choice for hard drives. Even the latest 15k-rpm SAS drives are awesome for spinning disks. the latest SSD drives are pretty nice now that they have most of the bugs worked out.

When you can buy them in the same price range, SCSI drivers are obviously the better choice. Apart from the "default base" issue of 330h that can conflict with certain hw like sound cards (DOS games autodetection) there is no reason against SCSI. They were built for speed and longevity. Only a handful of old IDE drives come close. But now that you do not keep critical prod. data on them any more, one can manage with a heap of cheap IDE drives as well. Provided you do not mind the occasional drive swaps.

umm...99% of the sound cards I've had use the 220h for i/o, not 330h. In fact with scsi you GAIN irq 14 & 15 for free use.

What is the best hard drive in for retro PC?
8086 era: ______ <--- Fill the best hard drive here

No votes for the Seagate ST-506 or 412 for 8086/8088 systems?

luckybob,

I see your point, if you do not use General MIDI devices or GM emulation then there is no issue at all 😀

I happen to have an ST-506. Not in use because I cannot bear jet engines within 20 miles but I admit, it is indeed a durable one 😎

sliderider wrote:

What is the best hard drive in for retro PC?
8086 era: ______ <--- Fill the best hard drive here

No votes for the Seagate ST-506 or 412 for 8086/8088 systems?

With an adaptec st-02 adapter, any scsi drive <1gb is possible.

That said, the seagate 157 series was godly for its day.