Failed IBM Deskstar DTLA-307020 & Internal View

Описание: Health: DEAD/FAILED
Manufacture Date: November 2000.
Capacity: 20GB
RPM: 7200RPM
Cache: 2MB
Platters: 2
Heads: 3

Quite an unfortunate loss this time. When I ordered this one I already had an unnerving feeling because for some reason these seem to have failed at an astronomical rate and I've read posts where more people complained they had one of these die since they were way more affordable at the time than the 60GB or 75GB monster IBM offered. In case anybody is wondering, for some reason nobody else seems to have a working one of these like at all, usually it is the 45GB, 60GB, or 75GB versions somehow, but these are just forgotten about being so low in capacity. When you think of a 75GXP, most don't think much about the 15GB, 20GB, or 30GB models, but rather the high capacity models that were notorious for failing even worse than the lower capacity models, or so it seems.

As for how this one looks internally, absolutely stunning! Well, in my opinion at least. I love the blue rings around the spindle and the very finely manufactured actuator and other parts, it looks amazing and shows that IBM did indeed care about the quality of their drives, at least aesthetically speaking. Maybe not so much in regards to reliability, but the physical beauty and all is definitely evident here.

Physically speaking, you can tell that the top platter has a clear "X" on it, likely because it had either too many defects or wasn't reliable to store data when the coating was applied, since you can see it looks fine otherwise. I assume this was since obviously in the factory they had 15GB, 20GB, 30GB, 45GB, 60GB, and 75GB drives. What I believe occurred was something along the lines of if the other side of the platter was usable and fine, but the other side was definitely not good to use, they would put it in drives like the 20GB and 60GB drives in order to not waste a platter and of course lose time and money from a defect in the coating on the platter. So since the 20GB drive only needs three heads, so three surfaces, you can just put it in anyways since that fourth surface isn't even being used by the drive.

Also notice: The actuator has three more spots available for three more heads, which would be the 30GB and 45GB models, just simply add more heads to the actuator since it appears up until 45GB the drive actuator is the exact same just with more or less heads attached. This of course makes plenty of sense and is quite common on some drives, it simplifies the manufacturing process and makes assembly easier and quicker. Heck, even the ramp is the same as a 45GB model! Isn't that something! May seem like a waste of material and space, but why mold an entirely different ramp just for a lower capacity drive? See, it all makes sense in terms of how things would be run at the factory, and it definitely saves them money by doing it this way.

So that's about it, hopefully you learned something and enjoyed, there's more to come in the future (hopefully not more dead IBM drives haha). Thanks for watching!