Pictures, close-ups and data: bananahdd.nl/index.php/2022/08/23/toshiba-mk-234fc-101mb-1989/

In 2020, desktop hard drives typically had a capacity between 1 to 8 terabytes. In only 30 years, the capacity has improved 80000x times while still maintaining the same disk size.

@TheDragonFire123

Жыл бұрын

In fact, in less size; some early 3.5" had a much taller z-height than the 26.1 mm standard of today.

@laurensholthof

Жыл бұрын

In facter fact: there's 30tb u.2 drives made by kioxia, which are only 2.5 inch.

@jasonvoorhees3282

Жыл бұрын

A micro SD card has been manufactured with a whooping of 128TB!! Probably a lifetime worth of data on a size of a penny. I cannot imagine how the technology in the future will be.

@laurensholthof

Жыл бұрын

@@jasonvoorhees3282 I'm sorry but could you cite your sources? Best technology can do rn is 1tb

@jasonvoorhees3282

Жыл бұрын

Sorry, I forgot to list the source. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card I originally found out about that such thing exist on a channel called “explaining computers” talking about SD cards

quite an elegant design, i must say the way the locking solenoid is done is quite cool

Extremely cool drives! I can't thank you enough for uploading your dead ones as the internals are something I have never seen before and I always wondered about! Drives like this that are rare have the biggest feeling of mystery around them, especially when there is absolutely not a picture whatsoever of the internals so you are almost extremely eager with some models and go "What in the world does this thing look like inside?"!

@bigbluebananabread

Жыл бұрын

My absolute pleasure! While I'm super sad both of my MK-234FC's are dead, the insides were absolutely fascinating to document. Surprisingly, when these models work as intended, their seek-mechanism is ridiculously quiet. (as observed with my working MK-232FC) I'd go as far to say it's almost boring! Either way, drives as rare as these definitely deserve to be documented! So many drives are so mysterious inside, so when they die it's a great excuse to look inside. Finding something nobody else has pictured online is quite a surreal experience and is always quite enjoyable, I'd definitely agree :) Thanks for checking out the video as usual too!

What a rarity; a 3.5" Toshiba produced without the help of Hitachi nor Fujitsu! Well, it did turn out completely different from a modern 3.5" Toshiba which is probably more reliable.

@bigbluebananabread

Жыл бұрын

Indeed! They're incredibly interesting drives for that reason alone. Fortunately, I have a working model to showcase still, alongside an even more interesting (in my opinion) vintage 3.5" Toshiba drive. Seeing no traces of Fujitsu or Hitachi is quite bizarre!

@TheDragonFire123

Жыл бұрын

Another interesting thing to point out is that the "handle with care" box warning actually still appears on modern Toshiba 2.5" ESD bags, alongside a dot point "PRECISION DEVICE. HANDLE CAREFULLY". It's come a long way.

the locking mechanism reminds me of those old IDE hitachi DK 2.5" drives. they had an electromagnet that moved a mechanism that locked the heads in park on the ramps.

@bigbluebananabread

Жыл бұрын

For sure! I thought of that too, since the 3.5" SCSI DK drives have the same thing that's incredibly loud! I have a Seagate ST3283A with a similar mechanism too. It's quite the cool method from back in the day.

Those are beautiful oh my god 😍

I dont know why but hard drives look so fucking cool

Dude thats a loud surface test happening in the background

I have a modern Toshiba 1TB from 2019, great quality and reliable fast drives! 🤓👌🏻🔝

@bigbluebananabread

Жыл бұрын

Yeah I really like the new ones too! Certainly a far sight more dependable than one of these! Cheers for watching :)

101MB? That's huge for the time!

oof headcrash! thats too bad! those heads sound like there grinding right into the platters! still cool to see

Very nice! love those old hard drives. MFM?

@bigbluebananabread

Жыл бұрын

These are standard IDE drives! As far as I'm aware, these are the first drives Toshiba released using the standard IDE interface.

Maybe you could try cleaning the top platter surface with a lint free microfiber cloth? I’ve seen some HDD data recovery companies do this with IPA as well to clean the platter surface when there’s debris or dust on the surface.

@bigbluebananabread

Жыл бұрын

Sadly, I gave this a shot when I got the drives, but they're well and truly stuffed. The debris is quite thick and has penetrated pretty deep into the platter. It seems that such high humidity didn't do these any favours.

@thegeforce6625

Жыл бұрын

@@bigbluebananabread that sucks :(. I’d presume picking at it with a plastic pick wouldn’t work either?

@bigbluebananabread

Жыл бұрын

@@thegeforce6625 I can definitely give it another go! My only worry is that it's on several other platters below too, so I think it's quite far past the point of being savable, sadly. I'm not discarding these anytime soon though, since they're way too interesting! Thanks a bunch for watching by the way! :)

I wonder what you could recover if they worked. 🤔

I have one of these but mine is also dead, but it is because the capacitors on the PCB leaked out and completely corroded the traces to oblivion. I tried to fix it but it is no use, the corrosion is deep in the layers and everything so it is junk now. Mechanically it should still work because it was working back in time before the board corroded. be careful with your drive if you have a working one because the caps might already be leaking, check for that

@bigbluebananabread

8 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing your experience with these! Seeing how rare they are, it's uncommon to hear other stories about them. It's a shame to hear your drive suffered such a fate, the only working model I have of these had the same issue. I've re-capped it & performed some fairly extensive trace repair so it works fine again. All three models I've handled of these have had the same leaky outcome (not including Toshiba's other drives from the period i.e. MK1034FC, MK2024FC, MK2124FC which often share the same fate). It's a shame, although I certainly see it being a reality where very few of these remain functional in the current day as a result. Mechanical issues aside, of course.

@Pulverrostmannen

8 ай бұрын

@@bigbluebananabread yes. But I actually had many drives getting affected by old caps starting to leak. Many on drives from the 90s are getting old enough for the seals to start leak on electrolytic caps and the stuff is very corrosive on the boards. I seen it so much I actually went through all my drives and removing every electrolytic cap on stored drives as a safety measure for that reason. I had some Quantum drives getting completely wrecked too because of leaky caps. Though this been on mostly the Pro drive series which fail internally because of rotting rubber bumper issue so these gonna die for everyone very soon if not already. The Quantum Fireball drives probably gonna survive most vintage hard drives ever made in the long run if they are not equipped with electrolytics. But a word of caution from me. If you care about certain vintage computer parts make sure to check for leaky caps on those as well. I actually had to repair two of my oldest computers in use because the capacitors on the Motherboards and inside the Power supplies started to leak on those as well. On my P1 the damage was detected in time but the dust around the caps was all wet with electrolyte on that. And the IBM 486 it would not even boot up anymore. It had pretty severe damage inside The power supply but I could repair it to good working order again. But it is sad we can’t even store the legacy because it gonna break from old age even when not used. We have to constantly watch over them and keep it under control if it gonna keep lasting 😢

2:13 I think the drive thought it initialized

@bigbluebananabread

Жыл бұрын

While I wish it were the case, the top-most head gets stuck on the surface damage. Giving it a slight tap forces it past, where it then spins down as usual. The seek-test of these is pretty characteristic, but sadly this one never comes close to getting there. Interesting drives though nonetheless, so thanks for checking them out!