I really like the sound of stepper motor drives, especially the ones with high pitched stepper motors, but sadly those are quite expensive so I don't have that many of them. But I do enjoy voice coil drives too obviously
Yeah, almost 4 years after starting, my collection has grown significantly. I’ve put around 100 to 150€ per month towards getting more drives, and this year I also was given a pretty big number of drives for free, which is why the semi-modern late 2000s/early 2010s grew so much. But a collection doesn’t have to reach this anywhere close to this point, even if you can get just a few drives it’s good as long as you enjoy them :)
I started working on IT recycling center 8 years ago. Sadly due to privacy I can’t bring HDDs at home. Fortunately on another hand, because I would have half of my house invaded with old hard drives ! I still have some old hard drives at home
Well they are working although some of them are in really really bad condition x'). I started in 2021 and have been buying drives pretty much every month since then, but it's the lots that helped the collection grow decently fast, especially when they are large and cheap like I've been able to find a few times
I was a bit worried that releasing this video the 24th might ed up being a bad idea as people maybe wouldn't be able to watch it, but it seems like it worked out pretty well
Haven't watched a video from you in a while and damn you have been busy collecting. Congrats on this enormous collection. I will actually sell most of my drives in the upcoming months or at least try to. Didn't do much with them since about my last video and they won't get better just sitting there. If you need any, shoot me a message ^^
absolutely massive collection. my collection of hdds is almost entirely comprised of hard drives from a big box that my grandfather gave to me with drives dating back to the mid 90's all the way to mid 2010s. I use one of those drives in my system (TOSHIBA DT01ACA200 2TB from October 2015) My favorite drive that I have is a WD Caviar 23200 from April 98. The Caviar branding is just so special and unique compared to many drives
Hey, you have a really cool collection of hard drives! I have a lot of new ones for SATA, from the older ones I have Seagate ST34311A (i still use it), Seagate ST32122A (working), Seagate ST-157A (working) and Seagate ST310211A (reallocated sectors), WD Caviar 1210 (broken head). I also have a few Maxtors and Samsungs but I don't remember the models :D
The phrase "bad sectors" sends a cold chill down my spine, so this video doubled as a horror. That being said, these are awesome tech treasures. My past fear and occasionally hate of HDDs has faded due to them moving away from being the modern PC's primary drive and into large-file and backup RAIDs where they truly shine.
Sadly finding drives without bad sectors is not very easy, especially as people may not store them properly or take care of them, and a lot of times the shipping protection really isn't adequate either... To be fair, even I wouldn't want to use a HDD as the main drives in a modern PC, SSD's are just so much faster... I do have a 6TB Hard Drive in my PC which is almost full but the OS and stuff that needs really fast speed is on a m.2 SSD.
@arnlol We're starting to see the weaknesses in SSD as well (bitrot, maximum writes, catastrophic controller failure, internal fragmentation), but they aren't quite so fundamental to the user experience. I'm currently expanding my small, running collection of ~18 TB enterprise HDDs in my home RAID. With an error-correcting file system and RAID for drive failure, defects are nicely manageable.
Well it will all depend if there's good deal to be found or not... Obviously the drives from Japan in the next few months will give a pretty decent boost towards that objective at least
Since last year "2023" even this year "2024". I just started loving HDDs. I just liked that guy, even the common problems it have Also you and others that make videos mostly about HDDs 😅
Yeah we aren't super numerous but there's a few of us making videos about hard drives so you can find some things to take a look at if you are into it :)
I kinda asked for it.. It’s making me want to start my own HDD collection. Took a few notes: The WD Purple at the end sounds identical to my WD Blue, especially the seektest. Most of the early 90s (mostly 89-91) Seagate drives sound similar.
Do it! You don't need to get it anywhere this large or get expensive drives to enjoy it! I've discussed with multiple collectors, some have a few drives, others have hundreds, some aim for the 80s, other the 90s, and some are interested by modern drives... It's a pretty niche hobby but there's still some diversity
I do not have any hard cards. They are not cheap and most are dead due to the degrading rubber inside them. The plus Hard Cards were made by Quantum and yeah the have the same issue than early Quantum drives
@notsoseagatey I remember when I thought I’d do it when I was at 300 drives early this year… And in the end it finally happened almost at 500. I hope you like it :)
Almost 2 years passed in between them but it's especially in 2024 that the collection grew the most. In between large lots of drives I've bought and many modern-ish drives I've been given for free... Earlier this year I thought I'd make the collection video when I was at 300, but when I finally did it I was almost at 500... So yeah grew more than 200 drives in 2024 alone.
@randomyt666 Well I just buy them on eBay or Leboncoin (French website where people can buy and sell stuff), I do around 100 to 150€ per month. I try to aim for lots when possible as usually they cost a lot less per drive then single units. This year I also was given maybe over 50 modern-ish drives for free.
I'm not too sure what to think of the ATA IV myself. It really marks the turn towards modern drives, getting a lot quieter and having that modern drive look to them, very different to the older looking ATA III that really doesn't look like a modern drive at all.
That's a really nice collection! Also, I think there is one drive that might be interesting to add to it in the future, and that is a WD ultrastar 16TB. It is helium filled, and has a very unique sound to it, both during the self-test on startup and at idle (since it constantly moves the heads, it permanently emits a rythmic "tock... tock... tock..." noise). I was actually quite surprised when I got mine, as I expected it to be a really boring and kind of slow HDD for backups, but it is actually surprisingly fast and sounds very unusual for a modern disk. Unfortunately, they can be a bit expensive, but you can sometimes get a good deal on them.
I think modern large capacity drives can have interesting seek tests but i'm not going to buy any as they are very expensive (And unlike the old stuff I usually aim for, they obviously are useful in the modern day)
I think WDs like those were quite common and obviously by the late 2000s the number of manufacturer had already gone quite low too. Those are pretty reliable I think
I agree it would have been nice but it would have taken so, sooooo much time to scan every drive… In 2023 I had done MHDD on the drives when I had 189 and it already took weeks to scan everything. Especially the larger capacity drives, taking multiple hours each. With almost 500 drives it might have taken over a month probably.
@@arnlolThe process could be faster if you had multiple PCs testing the hard drives. Also you could also just simply reuse the MHDD scan results from last year if it didn't get any worse.
Yes the Nikimi is a white label WD, so is the MDT. Both of them do detect as the brand written on them, so these companies did do some modifications to the firmware of the drives
Je cherche le ou les disques durs que mon PC de l’époque avait. C’était un Siemens Xpert avec les trois lumières en haut à droite. Malgré les tonnes de disques durs dans tes vidéos impossible de retrouver le même exact seek Tesr qu’il faisait, peut être il y en avait deux disques durs … J’ai mis une vidéo du démarrage que j’avais faite sur ma chaîne. Siemens Xpert old PC startup (What is the hard drive?) th-cam.com/video/hLRv3u8wwVs/w-d-xo.html
@@grxninesix J’ai l’impression qu’il y’en a qu’un seul mais je reconnais pas le seek test. Le son qu’il fait quand ils démarre et quand les têtes se débloquent me font dire que c’est sûrement un Western Digital mais aucune idée de quel modèle, et effectivement j’en est pas qui font ça comme seek test. J’ai envoyé un message à un endroit ou il y a quelques autres collectionneurs au cas ou ils auraient une idée.
@ oui j’hésite entre un WD et un Maxtor J’ai cherché des spin up maxtor wt je suis tombé sur un meme démarrage. Seul le seektest était un peu différent
Faut savoir qu’un certain temps il faisait les deux petites cric cric et après un long seektest de presque deux secondes (un peu comme la fin de ceux des WD de l’époque) Je serais intéressé à avoir le lien du forum
![Little Guys 9: The First Of Many [Intertel Axxess]](/img/n.gif)
This video satisfies my computer tism, thanks haha. Love the sound of these old drives, especially the ones with noisy stepper motors
I really like the sound of stepper motor drives, especially the ones with high pitched stepper motors, but sadly those are quite expensive so I don't have that many of them. But I do enjoy voice coil drives too obviously
Your collection is absolutely crazy, so much HDDs. It’s like an impossible dream to me
Yeah, almost 4 years after starting, my collection has grown significantly. I’ve put around 100 to 150€ per month towards getting more drives, and this year I also was given a pretty big number of drives for free, which is why the semi-modern late 2000s/early 2010s grew so much.
But a collection doesn’t have to reach this anywhere close to this point, even if you can get just a few drives it’s good as long as you enjoy them :)
@@arnlol I've got like 11 drives of which 3 are untested, 7 work fine and 1 unusable
I still enjoy them though, thats what matters :)
I started working on IT recycling center 8 years ago. Sadly due to privacy I can’t bring HDDs at home. Fortunately on another hand, because I would have half of my house invaded with old hard drives !
I still have some old hard drives at home
I would really like to have old HDDs, they fascinate me. And also my dream is to have a Pentium machine with Hdmotion!
"trust me bro, they are all still working"
as an HDD collector myself, I'm really impressed with how huge your collection is
Well they are working although some of them are in really really bad condition x'). I started in 2021 and have been buying drives pretty much every month since then, but it's the lots that helped the collection grow decently fast, especially when they are large and cheap like I've been able to find a few times
That's the ASMR we never asked for, but desperately needed.
Perfect present :D thank you :)
I was a bit worried that releasing this video the 24th might ed up being a bad idea as people maybe wouldn't be able to watch it, but it seems like it worked out pretty well
Haven't watched a video from you in a while and damn you have been busy collecting. Congrats on this enormous collection. I will actually sell most of my drives in the upcoming months or at least try to. Didn't do much with them since about my last video and they won't get better just sitting there. If you need any, shoot me a message ^^
Let's go!!! the collection we all waited for!
Quite a few people waited for it and it was kinda long overdue... Hope you liked it :)
@arnlol i enjoyed it
absolutely massive collection. my collection of hdds is almost entirely comprised of hard drives from a big box that my grandfather gave to me with drives dating back to the mid 90's all the way to mid 2010s. I use one of those drives in my system (TOSHIBA DT01ACA200 2TB from October 2015) My favorite drive that I have is a WD Caviar 23200 from April 98. The Caviar branding is just so special and unique compared to many drives
That's pretty nice! Yeah Caviar drives are quite nice, I think a lot of people like them.
Hey, you have a really cool collection of hard drives! I have a lot of new ones for SATA, from the older ones I have Seagate ST34311A (i still use it), Seagate ST32122A (working), Seagate ST-157A (working) and Seagate ST310211A (reallocated sectors), WD Caviar 1210 (broken head). I also have a few Maxtors and Samsungs but I don't remember the models :D
The phrase "bad sectors" sends a cold chill down my spine, so this video doubled as a horror. That being said, these are awesome tech treasures. My past fear and occasionally hate of HDDs has faded due to them moving away from being the modern PC's primary drive and into large-file and backup RAIDs where they truly shine.
Sadly finding drives without bad sectors is not very easy, especially as people may not store them properly or take care of them, and a lot of times the shipping protection really isn't adequate either... To be fair, even I wouldn't want to use a HDD as the main drives in a modern PC, SSD's are just so much faster... I do have a 6TB Hard Drive in my PC which is almost full but the OS and stuff that needs really fast speed is on a m.2 SSD.
@arnlol We're starting to see the weaknesses in SSD as well (bitrot, maximum writes, catastrophic controller failure, internal fragmentation), but they aren't quite so fundamental to the user experience.
I'm currently expanding my small, running collection of ~18 TB enterprise HDDs in my home RAID. With an error-correcting file system and RAID for drive failure, defects are nicely manageable.
Absolutely incredible (just like the last one, but even more so)! Given how it went this year, who knows how quickly you could hit 600 next year ;)
Well it will all depend if there's good deal to be found or not... Obviously the drives from Japan in the next few months will give a pretty decent boost towards that objective at least
Holy shit, I was awaiting this video! Good job on collecting those drives.
Thanks! I'll continue to get more as long as it's still realistically doable :)
Since last year "2023" even this year "2024". I just started loving HDDs. I just liked that guy, even the common problems it have
Also you and others that make videos mostly about HDDs 😅
Yeah we aren't super numerous but there's a few of us making videos about hard drives so you can find some things to take a look at if you are into it :)
I kinda asked for it.. It’s making me want to start my own HDD collection.
Took a few notes:
The WD Purple at the end sounds identical to my WD Blue, especially the seektest.
Most of the early 90s (mostly 89-91) Seagate drives sound similar.
Do it! You don't need to get it anywhere this large or get expensive drives to enjoy it! I've discussed with multiple collectors, some have a few drives, others have hundreds, some aim for the 80s, other the 90s, and some are interested by modern drives... It's a pretty niche hobby but there's still some diversity
not gonna lie, I only watched the first few minutes. neat how those oldies still spin up! got any hardcards?
I do not have any hard cards. They are not cheap and most are dead due to the degrading rubber inside them. The plus Hard Cards were made by Quantum and yeah the have the same issue than early Quantum drives
amazing collection, keep it up
Thanks! I'll try to continue growing it but it all depends on if I can find drives at good prices which might not always be possible
Lets gooooooo!! Been waiting for so long!
@notsoseagatey I remember when I thought I’d do it when I was at 300 drives early this year… And in the end it finally happened almost at 500. I hope you like it :)
@arnlol Yeah I actually love your massive collection :-)
Amazing collection of drives!
Thanks!
Lovely!
39:12my first ever pc, with Windows 95, a Compaq Presario all in one, has this HDD 🥹🤧 the sound of my childhood
I think the Quantum Fireball was quite popular back then, and the sound of it is quite recognizable
I still remember the last collection video. Its definitely grown exponentially.
Almost 2 years passed in between them but it's especially in 2024 that the collection grew the most. In between large lots of drives I've bought and many modern-ish drives I've been given for free... Earlier this year I thought I'd make the collection video when I was at 300, but when I finally did it I was almost at 500... So yeah grew more than 200 drives in 2024 alone.
@arnlol I remember the last video being like 48 minutes long. I would like to know how you get so many drives
@randomyt666 Well I just buy them on eBay or Leboncoin (French website where people can buy and sell stuff), I do around 100 to 150€ per month. I try to aim for lots when possible as usually they cost a lot less per drive then single units. This year I also was given maybe over 50 modern-ish drives for free.
Hell yea!
All ATA IVs are what I like the most:
1:00
1:15:40
1:29:39
I'm not too sure what to think of the ATA IV myself. It really marks the turn towards modern drives, getting a lot quieter and having that modern drive look to them, very different to the older looking ATA III that really doesn't look like a modern drive at all.
1:54:49 this one sounds exactly like the backup drive I use with my Mac! It’s also a seagate of the same age but with 1tb capacity instead
Nice, yeah the 7200.12 goes up to 1TB
Seems I didn’t watch until the end, because the one at 1:56:46 is identical to mine (even the reallocated sectors too) except the manufacture date
That's a really nice collection! Also, I think there is one drive that might be interesting to add to it in the future, and that is a WD ultrastar 16TB. It is helium filled, and has a very unique sound to it, both during the self-test on startup and at idle (since it constantly moves the heads, it permanently emits a rythmic "tock... tock... tock..." noise). I was actually quite surprised when I got mine, as I expected it to be a really boring and kind of slow HDD for backups, but it is actually surprisingly fast and sounds very unusual for a modern disk. Unfortunately, they can be a bit expensive, but you can sometimes get a good deal on them.
I think modern large capacity drives can have interesting seek tests but i'm not going to buy any as they are very expensive (And unlike the old stuff I usually aim for, they obviously are useful in the modern day)
If every single one of those drives were healthy how much storage would you have with all the drives combined?
1:43:36 seems I have the ide variant of this particular drive, the 7200.8 ST3250823A
havent watched the full video yet, does he have a qantum bigfoot?
I have just one bigfoot, the original one (which doesn't have the "classic" Quantum seek test)
1:32:05 I distinctively heard my granny’s old pc fire up
I think WDs like those were quite common and obviously by the late 2000s the number of manufacturer had already gone quite low too. Those are pretty reliable I think
Imagine Raiding all these together as a giant JBOD raid and trying to copy a massive file to them, it would be a symphony!
Love it, kinda wish there was a SMART stats and MHDD scan.
I agree it would have been nice but it would have taken so, sooooo much time to scan every drive… In 2023 I had done MHDD on the drives when I had 189 and it already took weeks to scan everything. Especially the larger capacity drives, taking multiple hours each. With almost 500 drives it might have taken over a month probably.
@@arnlolThe process could be faster if you had multiple PCs testing the hard drives. Also you could also just simply reuse the MHDD scan results from last year if it didn't get any worse.
2 hours of mechanical goodness noise
Yep, as some people have told me it's like "hard drives - the movie" x)
Pretty sure the Nikimi drive is actually a WD.
Yes the Nikimi is a white label WD, so is the MDT. Both of them do detect as the brand written on them, so these companies did do some modifications to the firmware of the drives
Je cherche le ou les disques durs que mon PC de l’époque avait. C’était un Siemens Xpert avec les trois lumières en haut à droite. Malgré les tonnes de disques durs dans tes vidéos impossible de retrouver le même exact seek Tesr qu’il faisait, peut être il y en avait deux disques durs … J’ai mis une vidéo du démarrage que j’avais faite sur ma chaîne.
Siemens Xpert old PC startup (What is the hard drive?)
th-cam.com/video/hLRv3u8wwVs/w-d-xo.html
@@grxninesix J’ai l’impression qu’il y’en a qu’un seul mais je reconnais pas le seek test. Le son qu’il fait quand ils démarre et quand les têtes se débloquent me font dire que c’est sûrement un Western Digital mais aucune idée de quel modèle, et effectivement j’en est pas qui font ça comme seek test.
J’ai envoyé un message à un endroit ou il y a quelques autres collectionneurs au cas ou ils auraient une idée.
@ oui j’hésite entre un WD et un Maxtor
J’ai cherché des spin up maxtor wt je suis tombé sur un meme démarrage. Seul le seektest était un peu différent
Faut savoir qu’un certain temps il faisait les deux petites cric cric et après un long seektest de presque deux secondes (un peu comme la fin de ceux des WD de l’époque)
Je serais intéressé à avoir le lien du forum
Au fait, le seektest est à peu près le même que sur ta vidéo du ST34311A, il y a juste un espacement plus long entre les deux parties du seektest