Author Topic: Ancient Seagate 2.5 GB USB 1.1 drive still functioning perfectly... (Read 10040 times)

kyrathaba · « **on:** February 16, 2013, 06:48 PM »

After all these years, my 2.5 GB Seagate pocket drive still works perfectly. I use it regularly, just to appreciate how fast my USB 2.0 devices are, in comparison

Just scanned it: no bad sectors, no file system errors...

KynloStephen66515 · « **Reply #1 on:** February 16, 2013, 06:53 PM »

kyrathaba · « **Reply #2 on:** February 16, 2013, 06:55 PM »

Do I detect the subtext "Meh" in your response?

Hey, all I'm saying is that it's kinda cool that a USB drive I bought years ago is still functioning, and functioning well at that...

Tinman57 · « **Reply #3 on:** February 16, 2013, 07:50 PM »

Do I detect the subtext "Meh" in your response? Hey, all I'm saying is that it's kinda cool that a USB drive I bought years ago is still functioning, and functioning well at that...
-kyrathaba (February 16, 2013, 06:55 PM)

Yeah, amazing considering Seagate used to have the "stiction" problem with most all their drives. I can remember when Seagate was the top dog of hard drives before the stiction problems ruined their reputation...

4wd · « **Reply #4 on:** February 16, 2013, 10:06 PM »

Conner had the same problem...and then Seagate bought them out...coincidence?

KynloStephen66515 · « **Reply #5 on:** February 17, 2013, 11:38 AM »

ok
-Stephen66515 (February 16, 2013, 06:53 PM)

wut?

I don't even ...

I didn't post that here...wth o.0

Renegade · « **Reply #6 on:** February 17, 2013, 11:47 AM »

I've had good luck with Seagate. They at least do business more honestly than other manufacturers I've dealt with.

skwire · « **Reply #7 on:** February 17, 2013, 02:31 PM »

Conner had the same problem
-4wd (February 16, 2013, 10:06 PM)

I still have a working 420 MB Conner hard drive on my workbench.

Deozaan · « **Reply #8 on:** February 17, 2013, 03:16 PM »

How did this topic get pinned, and why?

f0dder · « **Reply #9 on:** February 17, 2013, 03:26 PM »

How did this topic get pinned, and why?
-Deozaan (February 17, 2013, 03:16 PM)

Drunk Stephen?

KynloStephen66515 · « **Reply #10 on:** February 17, 2013, 04:55 PM »

How did this topic get pinned, and why?
-Deozaan (February 17, 2013, 03:16 PM)
Drunk Stephen?

-f0dder (February 17, 2013, 03:26 PM)

Pressed the button by accident, hit stop, didn't actually stop it pinning, when I noticed, came back and fixed it xD

kyrathaba · « **Reply #11 on:** March 04, 2013, 02:27 PM »

I know you're gonna laugh, but the PC I primarily use is ... wait for it ... an eMachine. Let me give you some time to recover...

Yeah, I'd originally bought it for the kids -- well, actually two of them. One of them they kept somehow messing up, so I switched out my Hp Pavilion p7-1003w machine and hooked up ye old crappy eMachine, or so I thought. Once I restored a decent starting-point Win7 OS from a Macrium image, and got the kinks worked out, it's not a bad little unit. It comes with two memory slots, which shipped from the factory containing a 1GB stick in one slot, and a 2GB in the second slot. I recently bought a 4GB stick from Crucial and replaced the 1GB stick, so now I'm running on 6GB RAM, and it's (perhaps it's only psychological) notably snappier.

Another recent hardware addition, and for the low cost of $18 USD + S/H I figured it'd be a bust, is my Calvary dual-Bay USB 2.0 RAID Dock:

The pair of 1 TB drives aren't of identical makes, so I've not been able to get RAID-1 working (as the manual says can happen in this circumstance), but JBOD is working fine, and I still keep the 2nd drive mirroring the first. They contain photos, MP3s, drive images for future emergencies, etc.

For someone who is not really a techie, and spent very little money on this, I've got a decent setup :

Meanwhile, I have this Hp Pavilion sitting here with 8 GB RAM (factory), upgradeable to 16 GB, so I'm sure it won't be long before the bug bites me to upgrade it and switch the PCs out.

app103 · « **Reply #12 on:** March 04, 2013, 02:54 PM »

That's a cute little thing!

40hz · « **Reply #13 on:** March 04, 2013, 03:14 PM »

@kyrathaba - +1!!! I've had good luck with eMachines myself.

Up until recently, my main PC for personal and fooling around use was an eMachine with an Athlon64 and 4Gb of RAM in it. I never had a Linux distro that didn't love that box or the odd assortment of cards I had plugged into it. Had a couple of inexpensive caddy/trays installed for quick drive swapouts. No need to get involved with multibooting or VM shenanigans with that machine. Just shutdown, pop in a different drive, reboot - and you were on your way running everything in native hardware mode. It was a beauty - even if it did eventually become a real hacker franken-PC because of all mods - plus things that were added to and removed from it at various times. (My GF said it reminded her of a Borg 'cubeship' with all the stuff I had glommed on, patched in, or left dangling off of it.)

I think I paid something like $400 for it new with XP Pro loaded on it. Easily the most reliable and unfussy of any machine I ever owned. Still have it. And it still boots. I keep it around mostly for vintage XP era gaming these days. But it's only a drive swap away from being pressed into service for a dozen other uses.

Great little box that is!

kyrathaba · « **Reply #14 on:** March 04, 2013, 03:23 PM »

^ Cool 40hz, I love stories about those kind of hardware experiences!

Now, do I shell out for a second 8 GB stick of RAM, upgrade my Pavilion to 16 GB ram, and start using it? I don't think I do anything that would benefit from such RAM...

40hz · « **Reply #15 on:** March 04, 2013, 03:27 PM »

^@K - Hey!

You never know. Take a look at Proxmox if you're getting bored. The Linux Action show did a whole show segment on it. Link here.

That would be a good use for 16Gb if the processor has enough grunt.

kyrathaba · « **Reply #16 on:** March 04, 2013, 03:55 PM »

^ if the processor has enough grunt...

It has an AMD Athlon II X4 650 cpu, upgradeable to any of the following:

AMD Phenom II X6 10xxT Six-Core (Thuban core)
AMD Phenom II X4 9xx/9xxe/8xx Quad-Core (Deneb core)
AMD Phenom II X3 7xx/7xxe Triple-Core (Heka core)
AMD Phenom II X2 5xx (Callisto core)

Shades · « **Reply #17 on:** March 04, 2013, 05:40 PM »

Conner had the same problem
-4wd (February 16, 2013, 10:06 PM)

I still have a working 420 MB Conner hard drive on my workbench.
-skwire (February 17, 2013, 02:31 PM)

And you used it for hammering the nails in your workbench, right?

skwire · « **Reply #18 on:** March 04, 2013, 05:45 PM »

And you used it for hammering the nails in your workbench, right?
-Shades (March 04, 2013, 05:40 PM)

Paperweight, mostly. =]

kyrathaba · « **Reply #19 on:** March 04, 2013, 09:14 PM »

Hmm, I think I've caught upgrade fever. Seems I could upgrade this eMachine's CPU from the current dual-core 2.8 GHz to a triple-core 4.0 GHz CPU for ~$69 USD.... Interesting...