This is all anecdotal, but Maxtors and Quantum Fireballs were highly regarded back in the day (mid to late 90s). If you're going SCSI, I remember the Seagate Cheetah 9.1 GB HDD was a big deal.

This was all based on performance, of course. I just remember those from reading reviews back in the day when I was looking for hard drive upgrades.

Maybe I delt with more PC builds during the 2000s that skewed the numbers and perception, but I feel around mid 2000s I've experienced more bad HDDs than the 90s and today from various manufacturers (which is why I don't have favorites, and I don't boycott any brand). The biggest that sticks out in my mind are the IBM Deskstars 75GXP (known as the Deathstars back then). It sticks out not only because it was a disaster, but because IIRC, when it was reviewed, it was actually a high performing drive (and quite affordable) and was sought after - until the news broke about the head crashes.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/591/16
http://www.pcworld.com/article/125772/worst_p … ver.html?page=5
https://www.engadget.com/2005/06/28/the-ibm-d … -drama-is-over/

If you're going back to the turn of the century, then at that time high end drives were SCSI. People who wanted high end performance and reliability and didn't mind the cost would buy a SCSI setup, but those were definitely expensive systems.
IDE/PATA was for mainstream, but of course some IDE drives were faster than others and I don't have much to contribute there. Storagereview published detailed tests of lots of drives in the early 2000s which I assume are still online, though that site seemed to fizzle out later.

As far as reliability between competing drives, that debate can go on forever, everybody has different experiences and opinions on that.

The Fireball 1080A was one of the fastest 1GB drives and later on the Fireball Plus line went to 7200 RPM and were considered very high end. Read that Fireball Wikipedia link I posted in your other thread.

Besides the Maxtor DiamondMax that GuyTechie mentions, IBM Deskstars were also considered fast, just avoid the 75GXP (Deathstars) that had a horrible failure rate.

On the SCSI side, the Quantum/Maxtor (Maxtor bought Quantum later) Atlas 10k and 15k series were always neck-and-neck with the Seagate Cheetah.

Storagereview.com's old reviews aren't very searchable from their site, but a little Google-fu (or going to the way-back machine) will pull up old reviews.

Got a smile out of shamino's mention of Storage Review. I helped them with reviews for awhile back around 1999-2001. Good memories.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the IBM Deatstar so far. 😀
http://www.pcworld.com/article/125772/worst_p … ver.html?page=5

Jo22 wrote:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the IBM Deatstar so far. 😀
http://www.pcworld.com/article/125772/worst_p … ver.html?page=5

GuyTechie wrote:

The biggest that sticks out in my mind are the IBM Deskstars 75GXP (known as the Deathstars back then). It sticks out not only […]
Show full quote

The biggest that sticks out in my mind are the IBM Deskstars 75GXP (known as the Deathstars back then). It sticks out not only because it was a disaster, but because IIRC, when it was reviewed, it was actually a high performing drive (and quite affordable) and was sought after - until the news broke about the head crashes.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/591/16
http://www.pcworld.com/article/125772/worst_p … ver.html?page=5
https://www.engadget.com/2005/06/28/the-ibm-d … -drama-is-over/

I'm someone. At least that's what my therapist tells me.

GuyTechie wrote:

I'm someone. At least that's what my therapist tells me.

Me too!

clueless1 wrote:

Besides the Maxtor DiamondMax that GuyTechie mentions, IBM Deskstars were also considered fast, just avoid the 75GXP (Deathstars) that had a horrible failure rate.

I unfortunately ran a Deathstar back in the day. I put one in my father's machine as well. Then everything came crashing down. Ended up getting money from a class action lawsuit. Certainly not the best of times.

clueless1 wrote:

GuyTechie wrote:

I'm someone. At least that's what my therapist tells me.

Me too!

🤣

Another Deathstar victim here. 😒

On the other hand, I have a Quantum Fireball 3.2Gb from the mid to late 90s that has seen a lot of use but still works very well. However like many (most) drives of that era it rattles horribly and on power on it needs to "warm up" so I have to set a few seconds of delay before booting in BIOS... 😁

I owned a Deathstar. If I recall, IBM did a recall so I never experienced my data going bye-bye.

The Deskstars just before the GXP60 series were great though, would go as far as calling them unmatched amongst IDE drives those days. They were pretty cheap too, if I remember it right. Perhaps that's why it all turned in to such a debacle by the way? The earlier models earned the brand popularity, and the bad series became widespread before starting to fail.

As a sidenote, managed to keep my GXP60 drive alive for years as a poor student who couldn't afford a new drive. I believe the key was cooling, tried to keep my had drives below 30 deg C at all times. Back then, fan noise was no concern of mine 😀

My favorites were always Quantum drives. I also had 1080A Fireball that was amazing back then. Around 2000 IBM's were the fastest. I had a 40GB 5400RPM drive as 7200RPM wasn't available here at the time. At the moment I have a collection of around 40 old HDD's - not all are in perfect condition (bad sectors). When I get to it I'll do some benchmarks 😉

Quantum was my favorite too. Something about the distinctive design looked very industrial/blue collar. They got a rep for low access times and grindy seeks, which I thought was awesome. Very SCSI-like.

The oldest drives I have left are a 1GB Seagate ST51080A and Quantum Fireball CR 6.4GB. From what I've read, the ST51080A gave the Fireball 1080A a run for its money. Both have satisfyingly audible spinup and seeks. 😀

I never owned an IBM drive back then, but when the "deathstar" episode was unfolding I remember reading that IBM issued an advisory that the drives involved weren't supposed to be powered more than 8hrs per day. That was around the time when it seemed lots of people were getting used to leaving their computers on 24/7. Nobody wanted to be told that their hardware couldn't handle 24/7 operation, and they expected the IBM brand to maintain a high standard of build quality. Besides, we're talking home use here - 24/7 just means it's spinning idle most of the time, it's not really being actively used that much.
That 8hr advisory wouldn't go over well for anybody, but I think for IBM especially it was really shooting their image in the foot.

It's too bad, IBM hard drives really had a good reputation prior to that, but afterward they just gave up and sold to Hitachi. Maybe they thought their name was too tarnished to continue.

I still have a 30 GB Deskstar in my retro. A power pin was broken that I had to repair, but otherwise it's still working great 🤣

kaputnik wrote:

The Deskstars just before the GXP60 series were great though, would go as far as calling them unmatched amongst IDE drives those days. They were pretty cheap too, if I remember it right. Perhaps that's why it all turned in to such a debacle by the way? The earlier models earned the brand popularity, and the bad series became widespread before starting to fail.

Later models were also seemingly OK. I have a 120GXP 80GB drive in my legacy system - the oldest drive I have. It's probably ~15 years old, and still runs *knocks on wood*. Not that the system has been used much in the past 10 years, so it hasn't put on that many hours. It's insanely loud, though. Like 10db louder than my other drives. When the PC starts it sounds like a jet takeoff. 🤣

TheMobRules wrote:

Another Deathstar victim here. 😒

On the other hand, I have a Quantum Fireball 3.2Gb from the mid to late 90s that has seen a lot of use but still works very well. However like many (most) drives of that era it rattles horribly and on power on it needs to "warm up" so I have to set a few seconds of delay before booting in BIOS... 😁

I never set hard drives to delay using the BIOS. Is it healthier for the drives to do so?

Just a comment about the Quantum Fireball 6.4GB (and only that capacity model): Although sold/reviewed/received as an excellent and premium drive, it was the main reason Quantum is no more. Just guaranteed to fail, although excellent while working. This does not apply for the rest of Fireball series of course.

My first Deathstar blew up after a year or so and I RMAd and got a second, I think that one always worked but I didn't trust it.

I like the Seagate Barracuda IV. Not quite the fastest in its class, but not far off, virtually silent and for a while they had 5 year warranties. Then there was a patent dispute and the sound deadening stuff it used wasn't allowed to appear on any later drives. Also subsequent to the Deathstar thing, all the HDD manufacturers reduced their warranties down to just 1 year.