Western Digital Caviar collection - Spin up/down of 19 vintage hard drives 

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Heh, sounds like my caviar 2850. Worked for a bit, then it failed as i was testing it after it sat for a couple months. Just suddenly started failing. The culprit ended up being head failure.

@@XL-Tech I’m thinking that’s what killed mine too. I was running a wdat_ide.exe scan. (It’s a program that reallocates bad sectors) And it started clicking and by the end of the scan it was over. Hopefully my 2850 doesn’t do that, it’s one of my favorite drives.

The 2850 is really nice. I remember hearing it was closely related to the 2700 so I guess that explains the refurb. Is it a weird hybrid of sorts or is it fully like a 2850? Sorry to hear about your Conner, they are starting to fail very frequently these days.

Totally agree! They have such an iconic seektest and look really nice. I also like how you can easily decode the model numbers. They tell you platters and capacity.

Same! That’s why I have 21 lol

@@antequated.archive I am now collecting these as fast as I can and the prices people ask for them who inherited them from yard sales or deceased estates is crazy cheap.

Having no bad sectors is actually quite rare! The media on caviars of this era is awful. Unfortunate to hear it failed in another way. These drives are extremely unreliable.

Thank you so much! I highly recommend the 11000. It looks and sounds great and seems to be reliable too. Hopefully you can find one! I got mine untested and it works perfect with no bad sectors. The 31200 bearings are quite an unusual case. It sounds almost crunchy. I’m definitely going to open it up and look inside.

​@@antequated.archive From the few examples I've seen, for the most part indeed! I appreciate the good luck, maybe one will decide to show up soon haha. Glad to see another Caviar 11000 around, they really aren't too common which is why they are pretty difficult to track down for a good price. if one shows up untested for a reasonable price, I'll take the gamble. Yeah would be awesome to see what is causing all the noise on the 31200, also does it vibrate really bad or not really? Usually when bearing start to sound worn out, they vibrate more, and if they are super worn out, they vibrate a bunch and make all kinds of noise. Let me know how it goes, shame the drive isn't usable in that state, unless the bearings are making it harder for the drive to read which would not be all that surprising since I don't know how the drive would get that bad under normal use..

@@cdos9186 It does vibrate a lot. The vibrations definitely could be interfering with function. It took 30 min to scan 5% of the drive in MHDD. Everything was red and x’es.

@@antequated.archive Yeah something isn't right with that drive to say the least, almost like the motor got out of alignment, I have never heard a typical worn out spindle sound THAT bad, it could've been dropped and changed the position of the bearings and hub inside the spindle itself causing that issue. That sucks to hear....

I’m glad you like it! The drive has definitely had physical damage, that’s for sure. There’s no way bearings could get like this through normal use.

Thanks! The 31200 did fail its seektest once but it is quite surprising. Also I was wondering, at the end of the model number it says either 00f or 00h. Do you know what the last letter means?

@@antequated.archive I wouldn't know for sure but it seems to indicate some sort of series the drive is part of, sometiemes the same model of drive will have different letters (One I can think of right now is the 21600, most end with H, but SmartBonnie has one that ends in LA which has a different PCB and sounds different). But I don't really know what they are supposed to mean

I never thought about that. Do you know of a way I could fix it?

@@antequated.archive You could open the drive and see if it is hard to move the heads, or you can hunt down another Caviar with the model number ending in LB to obtain another PCB.