How old is your oldest hard drive still in operation?

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - How old is your oldest hard drive still in operation?

Posted: 12/21/2011 12:50:46 PM EDT

I have an Acer laptop purchased in the summer of 2004 when I went off the college –– it still works, and all the equipment (other than the hinges) is original, including the hard drive. Looks like I'm going on 7.5 years for this drive with zero issues.

80GB 4200RPM PATA (yes, it is slow...but it still works fine!), pretty sure it is a Hitachi.
Defraggler is showing it as 5,923 for the Power Cycle Count, and 266 days for the Power On Hours (I'm assuming they mean 24-hour days, so 6,384 hours?)

Posted: 12/21/2011 1:00:09 PM EDT

[#1]

Fujitsu MPE3136AT, SMART says 78,275 hours. I have a few others in the 30,000-50,000 hour range.

Posted: 12/21/2011 1:12:23 PM EDT

[#2]

Quoted:
Fujitsu MPE3136AT, SMART says 78,275 hours. I have a few others in the 30,000-50,000 hour range.

Damn!

Blows mine out of the water.

edit: I clearly wasn't thinking mine was spectacularly high or something, I know that many of you with 24/7 servers will have some high numbers. I will say that I have been pleased with this drive's performance though –– it has been beaten around, carried all over the place in my bookbag, hot, cold. blah blah blah...and still works great.

Posted: 12/21/2011 2:42:08 PM EDT

[#3]

I have a Gateway from '98 with a 13G drive that has pretty much ran 24/7 since the day it came in the mail. IIRC, it is a Hitachi. I added on additional drives for storage as it has been relegated as a server, but other than that, the machine and drive just run.

I also have drives in other machines that date back to the early 2000's that still run fine (early 100G drives). If I was home I'd give info on them.....

Posted: 12/21/2011 5:17:52 PM EDT

[#4]

254mb maxtor from 1991 i believe, 100-something-mb conner that powered up and i got data off of a few weeks ago, from around the same time period. actually, i ran about 25 100mb-2gb disks through to get data off, most still worked.

i have some full height 5.25" scsi's that i will be trying next.

Posted: 12/22/2011 11:33:22 PM EDT

[#5]

Nothing close to that. The oldest is a Hitachi DeskStar 160 GB (model HDS722516VLSA80) I bought in 2003. It was the first SATA drive I bought.

I stopped using it for a while because it was making funny noises. Plugged it back in to check - SMART says a little over 53000 power-on hours. Hard Disk Sentinel reports 9 bad sectors which have been reallocated, and estimates 83 days of life remaining (no idea what that estimate is based on).

Posted: 12/24/2011 3:05:21 AM EDT

[#6]

SMART?

Can somebody tell me how to run SMART on a AN/UYH-3 disc pack that was manufactured in the 80's?

We've got a ton of *ancient* equipment still in service. 9 track tape drives, winchester disc packs, etc...

Posted: 12/25/2011 10:31:11 AM EDT

[#7]

40GB HD in a computer i built in 2000

Its slow(AMD 1G CPU) but still works

Posted: 12/25/2011 10:37:24 AM EDT

[#8]

Mac Classic from 1991. 40MB hard drive - still does the job.

FTR - my tape drives from teh late 70's and early 80's still work

Posted: 12/25/2011 7:11:39 PM EDT

[#9]

Have a 1994 Mac desktop with a still-functioning HD. Once in awhile I fire it up just to see if it runs.

My Dell XPS 410 desktop's HD from 2006 actually sees regular use, though.

Posted: 12/27/2011 8:25:16 AM EDT

[#10]

I have a 20GB IBM Deathstar Deskstar from January 2000 that I just hooked up to pull data off of.

Loud, and not that fast anymore, but somehow still ran.

Posted: 12/27/2011 8:32:41 AM EDT

[#11]

i still have an old Tandy 1000sl laying around somewhere. IIRC it has a 10gb hard drive in it. old xt ide controller. I do have some old mfm and rll drives laying around that were working when i disconnected them. i think they 2 and 5gb drives.

Posted: 12/27/2011 8:38:56 AM EDT

[#12]

best western 30g from 2000, it had a lot of storage and I thought I would never fill it but along came napster

Posted: 12/27/2011 2:01:39 PM EDT

[#13]

1998 Seagate 36GB 10K. 6 of them.

Posted: 1/3/2012 11:20:42 AM EDT

[#14]

Oldest is a 20 mb microscience FMF drive I just took out of my 8086 Compaq Deskpro , still works but I updated to a XTIDE IDE controller with a 250 MB western Digital IDE drive.

Posted: 1/3/2012 11:24:49 AM EDT

[#15]

Quoted:
Oldest is a 20 mb microscience FMF drive I just took out of my 8086 Compaq Deskpro , still works but I updated to a XTIDE IDE controller with a 250 MB western Digital IDE drive.

Its dated 1986

Posted: 1/4/2012 4:43:49 AM EDT

[#16]

I think I've got you all beat. I do contract IT work for a plastics manufacturer from time to time. They have a router (the kind that routes wood, not packets) that is used to cut wood inserts for plastic office furniture. The system uses an ESDI hard drive that is supposedly original to the router. The router was manufactured in October 1983, making it a full two months older than I am.

Fortunately, the only thing that ever broke on that machine was the EGA monitor. I've had to replace it several times over the years. Do you know how much an EGA monitor costs on eBay these days? The router, by the way, was made by these folks:

http://www.thermwood.com

I can only hope they put the same quality into their hardware today as they did three decades ago!

Posted: 1/4/2012 4:55:18 AM EDT

[#17]

Quoted:
I think I've got you all beat. I do contract IT work for a plastics manufacturer from time to time. They have a router (the kind that routes wood, not packets) that is used to cut wood inserts for plastic office furniture. The system uses an ESDI hard drive that is supposedly original to the router. The router was manufactured in October 1983, making it a full two months older than I am.

Fortunately, the only thing that ever broke on that machine was the EGA monitor. I've had to replace it several times over the years. Do you know how much an EGA monitor costs on eBay these days? The router, by the way, was made by these folks:

http://www.thermwood.com

I can only hope they put the same quality into their hardware today as they did three decades ago!

trust me, they don't, and my underwear is older than you.

Posted: 1/4/2012 2:27:32 PM EDT

[#18]

I just got off the phone with a friend who still has our old joint effort BBS computer, it ran an RLL hard disk, and he plugged it in and said it fired right up. Initial dial-in was via a 1200bps modem (we had some folks who connected at 300bps) before we upgraded to a 9600 (had to pool our money at the time to buy it). Don't mean to get off topic, sorry. The computer was my old Tandy 1000SL and we ran the disk off an ISA (8-bit) controller. I had to give up my 5.25" 360k floppy disk drive so it would fit in the case. But I kept my 720k 3.5. I do not remember the size of the disk, but I know it wasn't more than 10MB. I miss playing Interstellar Annihilation, Legend of the Red Dragon, and The Pit! Those were good times. And netmail was awesome. FIDOnet ftw!

Posted: 1/5/2012 8:39:49 AM EDT

[#19]

Quoted:

Quoted:
I think I've got you all beat. I do contract IT work for a plastics manufacturer from time to time. They have a router (the kind that routes wood, not packets) that is used to cut wood inserts for plastic office furniture. The system uses an ESDI hard drive that is supposedly original to the router. The router was manufactured in October 1983, making it a full two months older than I am.

Fortunately, the only thing that ever broke on that machine was the EGA monitor. I've had to replace it several times over the years. Do you know how much an EGA monitor costs on eBay these days? The router, by the way, was made by these folks:

http://www.thermwood.com

I can only hope they put the same quality into their hardware today as they did three decades ago!

trust me, they don't, and my underwear is older than you.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - How old is your oldest hard drive still in operation?

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