If there were a limit, you could set a Host Protected Area to shrink the drive before putting it into an old system (possibly through a SATA-IDE converter).

The small ones might have true 512-byte sectors instead of 4K emulated, but that doesn't really matter.

If they are old enough to predate SMR, that would be more reason to use up your allocation on the big ones.

There's the 2 TB limit beyond which you need to use GUID Partition Table - bad for older systems.
So perhaps it would be a good idea to keep a bunch of 2 TB drives?

Up to 2 TB is fine for MBR, the only problem would be BIOS support for LBA48 that is not commonly available in older computers.

There are multiple ways to get around this limitation, one of them is using Ontrack Disk Manager or XT-IDE BIOS (which is not restricted to 8-bit ISA slots). Another but less efficient way is by limiting the maximum available capacity (depending on the BIOS) thru utilities if the HDD support it.

I would go for smallest up to 1Gb or 2Gb, depending on how many there are.

Only thing that would stop me going large as possible is if there were some hybrid drives that were SSD fast, then I'd snag a few of those. Small stuff seems to collect up naturally here.

250-500gb HDDs with one platter could be neat. They are thinner than regular 3.5 inch drives and pretty quiet.

Ah cool, the 2TB - MBR limit is good to know!
Wont waste too much time on the smaller drives, I'll keep 1/2 and eye out for the interesting ones mentioned but most come from old dell business PC's so don't like my chances.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-06, 00:03:

I'm allowed to grab a "reasonable amount" but any reason not to just get the larger drives?

I've got a source for as many "spinning rust" drives as I want, and I usually prefer smaller ones. (100-500g is my preferred size range)

I usually use these drives while testing various things, and I find that is almost always LOTS for anything I'm not planing to put into long-term use.

I mainly choose smaller as I'm often testing older stuff and some systems either don't accept, or can get noticeably sluggish with very large drives.

and ... if it's a different file system, or the OS just "wants" to as part of it's install, it can result in a full-format which for some systems can take a long time on big drives..

And don't forget - loosing 1 of an array of 4 500G drives instead of losing 1 of an array of 1 2T drive does mean you have a better chance of not losing all your critical "stuff" - and yes.. you should keep it backed up .... but how often do you backup 2T of data. (if you can get enough of the bigger ones,
consider RAIDing them)

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

DaveDDS wrote on 2024-12-09, 03:48:

I've got a source for as many "spinning rust" drives as I want, and I usually prefer smaller ones. (100-500g is my preferred siz […]
Show full quote

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-06, 00:03:

I'm allowed to grab a "reasonable amount" but any reason not to just get the larger drives?

I've got a source for as many "spinning rust" drives as I want, and I usually prefer smaller ones. (100-500g is my preferred size range)

I usually use these drives while testing various things, and I find that is almost always LOTS for anything I'm not planing to put into long-term use.

I mainly choose smaller as I'm often testing older stuff and some systems either don't accept, or can get noticeably sluggish with very large drives.

and ... if it's a different file system, or the OS just "wants" to as part of it's install, it can result in a full-format which for some systems can take a long time on big drives..

And don't forget - loosing 1 of an array of 4 500G drives instead of losing 1 of an array of 1 2T drive does mean you have a better chance of not losing all your critical "stuff" - and yes.. you should keep it backed up .... but how often do you backup 2T of data. (if you can get enough of the bigger ones,
consider RAIDing them)

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

Thats the problem unlimited supply usually becomes limited at some point, lucky you usually have enough warning to plan ahead though.

When I saw the SATA to IDE ratio was beginning to shift towards SATA I started collecting IDE drives, there was way too many 20/40 GB drives to take them all but 8GB and below or anything above 80 GB I'd always grab.
In the past 10 years I've only seen 1 IDE machine and did save the pair of 40GB drives, even though I've probably got a lifetime supply of IDE already.

It's now at that point SATA is loosing out to SSD or M2 drives, so again time to ramp up collecting. I do have 2 shoeboxes worth of drives mostly 500GB and under but too much space is never enough!
What I'm starting to do now is have a full backup of drivers and install files/ISO's/patches for both applications as well as games on a separate partition on the PC. Making it somewhat self-contained should I ever need to reinstall.
As well as having a backup of everything on my "server"

This means as I have 3 XP rigs that's 4 copes of my XP era software not counting original physical media.
Also as Hard drives are no longer in short supply and I have CPU cycles to spare I'm using onboard RAID in a mirror, I know it's not great but maybe it'll save me from having to do a fresh install. and even if it does, most valuable things lost are savegames.

I also started collecting SATA hard drives; especially SATA1 or SATA2 that can be jumpered to SATA1 to use in systems with VIA 8237R southbridge. I also limit myself to hdd's with a maximum capacity of 2000gb.

You don't need to collect HDDs for VIA 8237R. It's much better to collect Sandforce SDDs which can be configured to work in SATA1 mode. But if you absolutely need a compatible spinning rust - Western Digital Raptor ADFD is the way to go. Best you can get for SATA1 interface, with an added bonus of very crunchy work sounds.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-12-09, 19:42:

You don't need to collect HDDs for VIA 8237R. It's much better to collect Sandforce SDDs which can be configured to work in SATA1 mode. But if you absolutely need a compatible spinning rust - Western Digital Raptor ADFD is the way to go. Best you can get for SATA1 interface, with an added bonus of very crunchy work sounds.

I haven't found a source for very low cost (ie: free SSDs)
So far I've got 3 (that work- SATA) and 3 more "card" type with a USB adapter... it sees the drives, but you can't reliable
write to them..

On the other hand - for spinning rust, I've got at least a dozen spare IDEs and even more SATAs... they just keep coming my way,
and I'm only *starting* to be able to turn them down.

As part of my "Daves Old Computers" collection, I had dozens of SCSI, MFM, and even a few 8" hard drives (not even counting
the ones that were in systems) at least that's all (mostly) gone to a worthy home now!

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-12-06, 06:06:

250-500gb HDDs with one platter could be neat. They are thinner than regular 3.5 inch drives and pretty quiet.

I had data corruption problems with a 1st generation Drobo. I tracked down the problem to the 3 TB drives being too thick, which prevented effective cooling, resulting in overheating of the unit. The problem was solved by using thinner drives.

ETA: The problem drives were DK7SAD300.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-12-09, 19:42:

You don't need to collect HDDs for VIA 8237R. It's much better to collect Sandforce SDDs which can be configured to work in SATA1 mode. But if you absolutely need a compatible spinning rust - Western Digital Raptor ADFD is the way to go. Best you can get for SATA1 interface, with an added bonus of very crunchy work sounds.

I already got around 15 Wd Raptor 150gb and use them in all of my socket 462 and 478 systems! They are really fast when Windows is starting up and shutting down however in everything else the difference between them and a 7200RPM drive is very small.
The SSD's with sandforce controller have a pretty bad reputation from what I know!

I suspect that cascading a SATA to IDE and IDE to SATA adapter between a VIA 8237R and a SATA2 or newer drive that still supports SATA1 (but can't be explicitly set to it through jumpers or otherwise) might be a workaround. I have not tried that myself and can't recall if I have one of those problematic VIA controllers. At best, I could see it it actually does successfully force SATA1 mode on another controller that I do have.

As for LBA48, are there really that many early SATA equipped mainboards that either did not include LBA48 out of the box or through a BIOS update ? I am really curious.

As for using a Host Protected Area to reduce disk capacity, I have seen it make the drive get detected oddly on a board that ironically does support LBA48. I think I posted it about that a while back somewhere here.

At the end of the day, it's good to have more than one option, because corner cases can and do happen. Smaller SATA or IDE drives can be one potential solution.

nd22 wrote on 2024-12-11, 09:08:

The SSD's with sandforce controller have a pretty bad reputation from what I know!

They are perfectly serviceable with the latest firmware. And beggars can't be choosers. Not a lot of SDD stuff has SATA1 compatibility.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-12-12, 00:11:

nd22 wrote on 2024-12-11, 09:08:

The SSD's with sandforce controller have a pretty bad reputation from what I know!

They are perfectly serviceable with the latest firmware. And beggars can't be choosers. Not a lot of SDD stuff has SATA1 compatibility.

Samsung EVO 860 and/or 870 models do support SATA1, AFAICR, unless that has changed.

Again, while I have not tried it, cascading a SATA2 to IDE adapter and an IDE to SATA1 or 2 adapter might be a possible workaround for SSDs that only support only SATA2 or higher. If there are (or will be) any SATA3 only SSDs, then we'll have a more significant problem as even the Marvell 88SA8052 tops off at SATA2 .

I would snag the largest size drives and use them for storage. Smaller drives you can still get in bulk for very little money if needed and I have stacks anyway.

Generally, a few years after transition is the time to stock up when the older style drives are just being dumped. I think spinning disks will last a lot longer on the shelf when SSD will.

darry wrote on 2024-12-12, 05:28:

Samsung EVO 860 and/or 870 models do support SATA1, AFAICR, unless that has changed.

AFAIK Samsung is not SATA1 compatible, you can't set it to strict SATA1 mode via any utility, which is why VIA south bridge does not work with modern drives. But you can do that for many HGST HDDs and Sandforce SDDs.