Looking for some low profile hard drives

[Maxxarcade]

I need some low-height hard drives for some games at work- they designed the system around the low profile (and failure prone) Maxtor Fireball 3 drives.

I've been browsing Newegg for some cheap drives, but there is no mention of the height of any of them. A standard 1" high drive won't fit.

Anyone know which ones are shorter? We used to buy the Samsung Spinpoint SPO411 drives, which fit perfect, but Newegg doesn't carry them anymore. They were also overkill, since the machine only needs a 6GB drive.

[Topcat]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

What about using notebook drives with ATA adapters??

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

That would work fine, as long as I can get the drives cheap enough (less than $50 each preferably), and find adapter brackets that are short enough.

I'll have to get a pic of one of the games just so everyone can see how stupid the design is. They run so hot that they needed full recapping and new fans in less than 2 years. And they cost about $4,500 each

I have a huge stack of bad hard drives, and a box of bad caps about 7" square from these games, just from the last year or two. Not to mention the fans and power supplies I've changed.

[gg1978]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

The ST3160811AS is a low profile drive, and i thought they had a 120G and 80G version that have different model numbers but still end in "811".. But they're Serial ATA..

[kc8adu]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

we have been seeing seagate slim drives in the simple tech(walmart) 160gb external.
again major overkill but maybee they made these in a 20 or 40

[gg1978]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

Just thought of another drive that's more like he's looking for.. The Seagate U series X.. I bought 3 or 4 of them from newegg a while back when they were $35 each for use in linux routers, they're 20GB, and 5400 RPM.. I think the model number for them is ST320014A or something like that.. I've also got a 40G one that's an HP system pull.. Some of the Microsoft Xbox's had a 10G U series X in them, later models mostly.. I think i've got one at home.. They have to be unlocked from the xbox before you can use them though..

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

I've got a few of those Seagate Xbox drives, but they are not low profile. In fact one of them has been running in my DVR server for ages.

I was so overjoyed when I found the unlocking utility for those drives, since the original Xbox motherboards were gone, and I thought they were going to be paperweights.

I just measured one of the original drives I need to replace, and it is 5/8" high.

[Rainbow]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

There were also low profile Maxtors. But you don't want them. Some of them still might be working so beware

[kc8adu]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

there are 2 types of maxtor slimlines
dead and soon to be dead.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

Soon I'll get pics of the 14" high stack of dead Maxtor slimlines that I'm trying to replace And that's a fraction of the total amount...

If I had a dime every time one came up and the BIOS said Maxtor ARES C64 or Maxtor Athena, I could buy a new machine. That is assuming it would even spin up at all.

[gg1978]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

The ones you have are the old ones then.. They're the U series 5 version.. The one's i'm talking about are labeled U series X, and have the model number ST310014ACE. Like i said before, they come in later model Xboxen. At first they started out with the 10G Seagate U5 and the 8G WD Protege, with the 10G low profile Seagate U series X later..

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

Oh, I remember now, those have the big white label on top of them... I've only seen two of those, and one didn't work, but those would be perfect for what I need. I don't have a tool to unlock those though, so it would have to come out of a working Xbox, such as after an upgrade to a larger drive.

I'll keep my eyes on ebay for some drives, now that I know a couple models that are small enough.

[gdement]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

I also bought one of those slim Seagate 20GB drives at Newegg. Mine was model ST320014A. Not sure if they have them anymore though. The problem is they're OEM, so your bare drive is at the mercy of newegg's packing skills.

The drive I ordered arrived poorly packed and did the click of death from the moment it was powered on. It had to be sent back for a replacement. That replacement has been running for a year now. The warranty on them is 5 years.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

Well, two more bad Maxtor slimlines today, now I have almost 20 bad ones in a stack. Time to find a few used drives, anything but Maxtor

Scary thing is, I have a couple Maxtors in my main PC. I hope they are better made than these slimline POS drives.

[willawake]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

uuh i have maxtors in my DL380 G4 dont talk about that shit man

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

Pretty soon I'm going to be able to do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YocnQ0NMTUA

FYI most of the dead drives I have are 40GB Fireball 3, with firmware VAM51JJ0.

Another bad Maxtor series was the Fireball CX with the melting Philips spindle motor drive chips. No wonder they call them Fireball I also have a few of those, some still work so I just use them for test drives when I wanna play with Linux or something.

The Maxtors in my PC are all holding all my vital stuff, so knock on wood...

Funny thing is, I used to HATE Western Digital, now they seem pretty decent.

And too bad IBM had so many problems with the 75GXP and some others, and sold their shit to Hitachi, whole still makes the Deathstars. IBM invented the modern hard drive in the 1950's didn't they?

[willawake]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

seen it before.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

ah you got me before I was done editing

[willawake]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

maxtors in the DL are Altas series
i have seen enough quantum failures though

the thing about wd is i never am able to recover anything from them. still i got a few recent ones. i would like to see how the seagate 7200.9 and 10 work out also. the difference is that i was able to recover all data from a maxtor when it started to get slow......

its all voodoo anyway. take your pick. dont buy hdds on friday 13 etc......

anyway google hdd study

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Looking for some low profile hard drives

I have a 320GB Seagate ST3320620A in my NAS server, and it seems to be working ok, but I wish I knew why the SMART logs always report huge numbers for the "Raw Read Error Rate" and "Hardware ECC Recovered" values. I guess it's a Seagate thing. The two Western Digitals in the same box don't have that problem. BTW there is 2197 hours on the Seagate so far, and 4479/5684 on the WD's. Been running 24/7 since new, in a well cooled 4U rack case. I wonder why the WD's have different hour values