World's Crappiest Drives

Any seagate st2xx and st1xx with upgraded seektimes denoted by the -1 suffix) and miniscrbes with "+" suffix. noisy and short lived. The mechanicals not designed to take that kind of stress. Voice coil is a must when going sub 40ms w/ fast track to track seeks. Also those seagate I listed also those miniscribes. they had heat deaths as well, those stepper ICs cooked nice DARK golden brown spots on PCBs. More specially on miniscribes, they develop stress cracks both in mechanicals and on PCB, two screws that holds the gear rack to the head platform in turn rides on rails loosens up with time and timing got lost. That gives this common "SOS" flashes. On Seagate all ST2xx series, a small spring that takes up the slack inside that spindle bearing assembly weakens and more loose causing data errors. On all st4xxx only ones with external motor cap that rotates has very soft steel spindle shaft and bad batches of bearings also and all drives based on st251 series has soft shaft also. Soft shaft bends very easily when bumped. Yes that's right, did my analysis on failed and dying drives. Confirmed. I had dud 11 micropolis based on 3.5" 1" height drives shipped to me by a seller along with few sick cdroms, 1 quantum hd that I replaced for warrenty. Good deal. Those micropolis 3.5" drives shudders.... they had NO QC at all. No problems on circuit boards, only no torque at all on 80% of screws!! The platters is only held in place by friction via a pressed in hub ring onto second equally loose hub ring, in turn to rest of platter stack. I said loose because that platters hub hole where hub goes through has very loose 1mm slack. Simply center all the platters and platter rings then last hub ring pressed to secure it all. A hard good non-dinging damage bump is enough to shift it all. Yup, got working 2.1 barracuda for a bux. Did test it ok but still needs to find a proper quality cooling bracket. A word about this. all ST5xxxx series is bit fussy about handling due to lightly built casing to get ".75 height and the tape band that goes around the seam for a seal tears real easy. Young techs and idiots rips open that foil-like band from rough handling and installation and dust gets in and that drive dies.. Any st5xxxx that are babied w/ care lasted long time. Oh, they're GREAT and they never heat up at all in lousy cases. Another note, it was nice performance for that time but Seagate didn't forgave those techs who cares about details, $eagate cut down that buffer size to 128K from 256K. >:-P And early ST5series smaller than 1G has 4500rpm while greater than 1GB got 5400. YUK. Many reviewers who envaluated drives says buffer sizes doesn't matter much but I do notice the differences. Much as you can get in any given drives helps lot. Wistress the WD, Protege series, 2MB, 5400rpm, dense platter and I didn't notice the loss in performance compared to my GXP 9GB 7200rpm w/ 2MB but big deal for me that protege is deathly quiet and cool to the touch. IBM got the award as well for making speedy hd that is not so noisy. Maxtor, where are you, those drives so noisy and odd performance loss!?. All ibm drives currently in production. Bar none. speedy and utter reliable. No. These you spreak of were in all computers with poor cooling and poor designs isnide and handlings killed all of them. whap! whap! slap! WHAP! it singed nice tones...sceeech! oops. :-) Now you know I didn't go for that ST4xxx when I discovered these has problems. st1xx has heat buildup problem and they always had died from stickum. Serious heat soak cooks the platters especially landing/taking off areas lube coating wears faster when hot and more softer also. Reult: stickum. If a running drive feels like as hot as holding a paper cup of 10 min old coffee. BAD. I only buy proven and reliable hds by reputation and that haven't failed me in long run. Advice, buy cooler running hd for poor cooling locations. Nearly all machine cases has this problems. Had ST3144A howl LOUDLY like a wolf suddenly. Can hear from next room over clearly. Cheers, Wizard