> The most notable survivor I've had has been a seized 1998 8GB Quantum drive, which I > found in early 2010. The PC it came in survived being thrown around side streets by > random idiots and dumped in a garden near a train subway! When I took it home, the > only damage (aside from the case which was bent around 20 degrees from the bottom) > was a blown power supply, of which I noted it was set to 115V when I found it. > > After swapping the power supply and running the PC board on the table, when I first > plugged in the drive, it made a few noises but wouldn't spin up (seized spindle). On > the second attempt, the drive actually spun up by itself (I have an audio recording > of this, making a humming/groaning noise), but couldn't get full rotational speed by > the time the PC's POST came up, so it wasn't detected. On the third attempt, the > drive started perfectly and loaded its old Windows 98 as if nothing had happened. > > I formatted it straight away and installed XP on it, and put it in my hard-waste-find > 3GHz Pentium 4 and it still runs perfectly today, easily capable of browsing the net, > watching YouTube videos and viewing Google maps (the original late-Pentium 1 ATX > system was retired soon after I originally tested it - no problems with it, cards or > the CD drive either, despite the machine being thrown around the road/subway by idiot > kids!).
Hahahaha... memories. When I was a tech long ago, we often used Quantum Bigfoot 5.25" HDDs as doorstops, bookshelf book holders, and even hammers. They either failed immediately, or ran like a tank for years and years, and you could use them as a hammer and they still might work afterwards. :P
- Stiletto
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