Seagate ST-412 Hard Drive Sounds - The drive that started it all!

Описание: Here it is, the drive that started it all!

The ST-412 is the first hard drive that was used in IBM PCs and the drive that gave its name to the ST-412 interface. Thanks to it and its competitors at the time, hard drives became a must have in PCs, and is a technology that is still in use to this day (even if more and more machines only run on SSDs at this point, hard drives are still the kings of high capacity mass storage at a decent cost).

While it isn’t the first 5.25 drive (that would be its predecessor, the 5MB ST-506), it is the one that introduced better capabilities like not needing a reduced write current signal, having buffered seeks (the ST-506 only took seeks at a speed of 3ms per seek pulse, which is why it will not work with most PC MFM controllers that are meant to use ST-412 interface drives) while obviously being twice the capacity at 10MB.

To me the ST-412 was sort of a "graal", a drive I really wanted in my collection, but that I never could find at a decent price until recently. While it definitely isn’t the rarest drive I have, I really wanted one for its historical value in the evolution of hard drives and PCs in general.

I paid 50€ for this drive (shipping included). The drive is working great with just 12 bad sectors after a spinrite II scan, and it also sounds very good, the bearings aren’t worn out. Unlike some others, this drive didn’t need any maintenance, I plugged it in and it just worked, neither the spindle nor stepper needed any help to run.

We’ve reached the end of the HDD "advent calendar" for this year, I hope you liked it, and that you think this drive is interesting enough to be the video for the 24th.
Merry Christmas everyone, and I’ll see you in 2026!

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