Don't worry - I'd received the drive a few days before this, and made sure it was thoroughly dry before spinning it up. The damage wasn't recent - looks like it was just sitting somewhere in a wet cardboard box or some such. I can say for sure that the drive is thoroughly dead, though.

My Laptop - I like that to be quiet. Old systems? Well, part of the fun is showing off how much noise the thing makes when it fires up... flip the switch on an AT power supply, sit back, and listen to your FDDs test themselves as the worn out bearings on an ancient HDD start screaming. It's all good fun.

As for emulated FDDs and CF cards, I can see the utility, but have never really used them myself - Whenever possible, I run things on actual hardware, but when that fails, everything is also backed up on a USB drive for good measure. The glories of Win2K - automatic flash drive detection. 😀 Unfortunately, I get the feeling it won't be so easy with a 486 system, but we'll deal with that when the time comes.

I've always wanted to get one of those old IDE DiskOnModules - they look like interesting little pieces of hardware. If only I could find one with ~1GB capacity for a reasonable price, that isn't loaded with some sort of irreplaceable diagnostic software.

I might just have a stack of 5 or so Quantum Fireballs inbound; hopefully they're still there by the time I get around to ordering them. Strange little drives, those Quamtums... loud, fast, and generally short-lived.

I remember when we upgraded the 420MB I think it was a Conner drive for a 1GB WD. Even then the Conner drive sounded better. But as the only PC in the house and replacing Win 3.11 with Win95 space was always a problem.

In my currant 486 I've got a 850MB Quantum Trailblazer in 2 partitions. Dos/WFW and my "dump" drive as these are where the constant file changes will happen. I did it more to save the write cycles on the CF card but it does mean I get to hear the clicky, click click while the PC starts up. I'll agree 100% this is all part of the experience, for me anyway. But then I've got an 8GB CF card split up in 2GB partitions for Games as the only writes that happen here is the occasional save game. and you rarely hear the HDD once in a game anyway. I've had many drives die on me over the years to trust them completely. Especially as there's no pattern, some last centuries even if they are on 24x7, some don't last a week!

Win9x and above I still rely on real HDD's. But that's more of a cost thing. I can usually salvage 20/40GB drives from dead PC's from work but with more and more having sata drives. I'm going to have to think. I just fell ripped off looking around on ebay for what by today standards is a small drive yet the fast drives still attract high prices (relatively speaking)

FDD? I like hearing the sound when you 1st turn it on and it checks for a disk but that's it. After that the reliability of the USB floppy emulator cant be beaten

For pure DOS CF cards will last a very long time. After you copy your games over there is hardly any writing happening. Like you mentioned, save games is really the only thing...

On 386 machines you can use DDO software to break the 500MB limit and get a 2GB partition. Interestingly enough such a CF card works just fine when plugged into a USB CF reader 😀 Happy days...