Even if the hardware is too old, a new hd gives it a big boost (I have a "new" hd ona a old pentium mmx) and wow, I can boot up the system in 30 seconds.
Also, I saw some videos about old hardwares with ssd hd, and wow, they really speed up the system (why would i need ram if the virtual memory is faster than the actual ram lmao)

Test finished, in the end i found 66 hdd to test, so mine little test grow a bit. Oldest drive is 200mb conner from 1990. Think that now i finnaly have idea about relative hdd speeds.

More graphs at http://extrahardware.cnews.cz/testy/evoluce-p … osti/strana/0/6 . Sorry about review, its only in czech language, but theres nothing important, only some info about hdd history. Who wants something about history in english, he should check ibm promo video about 1st hdd made at youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVIKk7mBELI

I find it not very easy to quickly guess how fast any particular old drive is. When I have 2 different harddrives with the same capacity, I tend to go with the one with a newer datestamp on it (even though I'm aware this rule has many exceptions).

I liked the single platter maxtor drives even though they were often lemons and pixie dust.