WTB: Semi-functional hard disks

[Mercutio]

Anyone have an old hard drive laying around that's not in usable condition but sorta still works? Bad sectors, scary hard disk noises, visible arcing on the board when powering up, only spins up half the time... whatever. I'd like to buy disks like that for classroom demonstration purposes.

This could be your big chance to get someone to pay you for that 4GB Bigfoot that makes rattling noises when you shake it!

 

[Tannin]

I've got plenty of them. But rather a long way to ship. Like a WD93044?

 

[Buck]

Looking through ebay...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2015173118

 

[Handruin]

Anyone have an old hard drive laying around that's not in usable condition but sorta still works? Bad sectors, scary hard disk noises, visible arcing on the board when powering up, only spins up half the time... whatever. I'd like to buy disks like that for classroom demonstration purposes.

This could be your big chance to get someone to pay you for that 4GB Bigfoot that makes rattling noises when you shake it!

I got a 1GB Maxtor EIDE drive that sort of works, I think it has a bad cluster on it, that's why I stopped using it. However I did open it up a while back so I don't know if it still works.

I could dig out my WD 1.6 GB caviar that still works and send it to you...Or send both? Any of these interest you?

Say $300 USD and they are both yours, shipping included. j/k

Seriously, if all you gave me were the shipping cost, I'd give them to you.

I've got tons of CPU's lying around somewhere...some 386's and 486's...want those?

 

[Handruin]

Anyone have an old hard drive laying around that's not in usable condition but sorta still works? Bad sectors, scary hard disk noises, visible arcing on the board when powering up, only spins up half the time... whatever. I'd like to buy disks like that for classroom demonstration purposes.

This could be your big chance to get someone to pay you for that 4GB Bigfoot that makes rattling noises when you shake it!

I got a 1GB Maxtor EIDE drive that sort of works, I think it has a bad cluster on it, that's why I stopped using it. However I did open it up a while back so I don't know if it still works.

I could dig out my WD 1.6 GB caviar that still works and send it to you...Or send both? Any of these interest you?

Say $300 USD and they are both yours, shipping included. j/k

Seriously, if all you gave me were the shipping cost, I'd give them to you.

I've got tons of CPU's lying around somewhere...some 386's and 486's...want those?

Oh, and I have a 50 MB quantum SCSI hard drive (ProDrive LPS as it says on the label, and it was made in japan) I'd be willing to part with. As far as I know it still works fine. It came out of a Mac I believe.

 

[CougTek]

Mercutio,

It would have been simpler if you would have just writen that you were looking for 75GXP ;-)

I have a non functional old Barracuda 9GB SCSI hard drive. My controller cannot access it (no format possible), although it detects it. Maybe it's just because they aren't compatible with each other (the Barracuda has a narrow SCSI interface), but I somehow believe it is disfunctional. If you are interested, I can ship it to you, as long as you pay the shipping (I don't accept VISA so I dunno how you would pay it, maybe via money order?).

 

[CougTek]

Upon verification, the drive doesn't have a narrow SCSI but an Ultra2 SCSI interface. It's a Barracuda 18LP (model # ST39175LW). It's more recent than I thought, but since I have no use for it, I would let it go anyway.

 

[CougTek]

Forget it, no more to sell!

I remember why I thought it was a narrow SCSI drive, there was an adapter on the Ultra2Wide connector. I never remarked it before, I thought the drive was made like that. I'll retest the 'Cuda latter to see if it will work this time (I shouldn't have any problem to make it work on my 39160 if it isn't R.I.P.). The adapter wasn't obvious BTW. It was stuck to the drive and I had to apply a considerable amount of pressure to remove it. But now it is ok and I didn't break the drive.

Thank you for creating that thread, you might have help me to repair my drive.

 

[Mercutio]

Thanks for any offers. I'll see how many I need, but I'd like drives that really do have obvious faults (lots of bad sectors, enough so that the firmware can't remap 'em all, or really nasty-sounding drives). The idea is to put them in front of people and diagnose the drives as having problems of various types, and maybe play with recovering data.

Thanks all!

 

[timwhit]

Instructions on how to fix-up your own drives.

1) Find old drive.

2) Unscrew cover.

3) Connect to power supply.

4) Make sure drive is fully spun up.

5) Take a metal object and slightly rub the top platter with it. It will make a really nice line all the way around the disc.

6) See if it still work. If it does repeat steps 2-5 until you have fixed it.

We used to do this all the time when I was working as a tech. We actually had an external CD-ROM that we used to mount the drive in. We would jam all kinds of stuff in there. It's fun for a little while, especially if it means that you don't have to do real work.

 

[J-Frog]

Merc, I have a 750mb WD with the lid off, An IBM Travelstar 12GN 5gb that is completely dead(ESD) with the lid off, a bunch of old Seagate 20mb drives with weird noises, a Samsung 2.1gb with a Jimmy-rigged power connector and severly damaged bearings(you can hear the drive throughout the whole house), a few old Maxtors 100-200mb(some good, some torn apart, one cooked with a blowtorch :diablo: ), an IBM DJNA-31700 which makes weird noises and spins down/up when surface scan hits middle of drive, A Quantum with the lid off that spins up, clicks, then spins down, a WD 1.6gb that was smashed by a rock, and finally a Toshiba 2.5in 6gb where the glass platters were broken off the spindle and the heads damaged but still spins up. I think that is all for now.