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Quantum Bigfoot hard drives

L

laxmann31

Member
Joined
Oct 28, 2009
Messages
18
Location
Indianapolis, IN
I have 2 Quantum Bigfoot hard drives that i would like to get rid of. I know they were horrible drives but maybe there is someone out there that might like a nice paperweight :D Both of them do work I will reformat them when/if they sell. Make me an offer!
Drive 1
Quantum Bigfoot CY
4.3Gb
Drive 2
Quantum Bigfoot TS
12.7Gb
 
I've had about 6 bigfoots of various types. Some are still working fine; others failed pretty quickly. It seems that once you get a good one, it works well.
 
True

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Chuck(G) said:
I've had about 6 bigfoots of various types. Some are still working fine; others failed pretty quickly. It seems that once you get a good one, it works well.
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Yeah i actually used the 12.7Gb one in my Gateway 2000 P4d-66 and it wasnt bad. But man when you run them outside the case they are LOUD! I'm just trying to get rid of computer parts that i really dont need. I gotta downsize my stash to one vintage desktop, my laptop, and one high performance workstation.
 
laxmann31 said:
Yeah i actually used the 12.7Gb one in my Gateway 2000 P4d-66 and it wasnt bad. But man when you run them outside the case they are LOUD! I'm just trying to get rid of computer parts that i really dont need. I gotta downsize my stash to one vintage desktop, my laptop, and one high performance workstation.
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Try running with an old Priam 519 or Maxtor 1140 FH MFM drive--the Bigfoot will seem like a whisper. :)
 
They are kind of slow (4000RPM?). The only one I have is in a Compaq (Presario 4770 I think) P166 of some kind tower with a slot loading CDROM and a bunch of audio control buttons on the top of the case, slow and noisy.
 
I used to have one of these in my work machine way back in the day. Yes, slow and noisy. Mine never failed though.

Tez
 
When I replaced my old server, it was running the same bigfoot it had since it was built back in 1995 or so! I have seen one crash due to poor handling and another develop bad sectors due to a flaky tape drive being too close to it but I have enver seen one ever wear out.
 
Unknown_K said:
They are kind of slow (4000RPM?). The only one I have is in a Compaq (Presario 4770 I think) P166 of some kind tower with a slot loading CDROM and a bunch of audio control buttons on the top of the case, slow and noisy.
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Yeah the CY was 3600 rpm, Tx was 4000 rpm and i believe the TS was 4000 rpm also. I was running xp on on of them at one time :cool:... yeah it was slow!
 
A quick check of the inventory on my shelf says that the CYs were pretty awful. The TS and TX drives appear to be much better.

"Slow" is relative. I've used a big Bryant hard disk drive on mainframes. 900 RPM and heads that probably weighed about 8 lbs. each.

Info for the curious.
 
offensive_Jerk said:
Haha, I was just looking at that sheet.... Never saw a hard drive rating at HP....

900RPMS @5HP :p
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Not to mention using hydraulic fluid in the positioner (it was designed to leak--the thing actually had containers to catch the leakage). I once saw an operator hit a pool of the stuff at a full run... :lol:

It seems strange that a firm whose main business was making paper milk cartons would manufacture hard drives...
 
Chuck(G) said:
I've had about 6 bigfoots of various types. Some are still working fine; others failed pretty quickly. It seems that once you get a good one, it works well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I remember buying one at a computer trade fair, because it was within my budget as a freshman student. Per megabyte, it was a very cheap drive, compared to others. :)

It ran fine, and I couldn't tell if it was slow, because I didn't have a reference on hand to compare it with. I knew beforehand that the performance would not be great, because I had read in a review that they were known for being slower, since the platters were wider (it's a 5.25" drive), and hence the read/write heads had more surface to cover. The magazine review advised the reader to use the Bigfoot as a secondary storage drive in addition to a faster boot drive.

Mine worked fine while I owned it, with the exception of one single glitch once while I was playing a game. It suddenly started making this repetitive sound that is typical for malfunctioning hard drives, after which my game crashed. After a power cycle, everything appeared fine again.

I can't seem to remember what I did with it later. I think I sold it as part of a machine, but I'm not sure. Man, has it been so long already? Wow... :eek:
 
My second computer had a 2.5GB Bigfoot. It had all sorts of bad sectors...but I loved it for its quirks. It was the first computer hard drive I ever saw actually.

I still have it, on the shelf of drives behind me. The PCB from a 1.2GB model saved the life of the 2.5...it was unusable until that swap. The 1.2 is now behind me on the other shelf with its lid off, displaying its one gigantic platter.

I might be interested in one of these off you. I imagine they're both the "fatter" types? I'll throw you a PM in the next couple days when I find out if I can budget it.
 
I actually collect these (I've got a stack of about 5-8) and all of mine work fine. I'd like to have the ones you're sellin' but I can't really justify shipping HDDs atm.
 
Funny story about these drives.

I used to have a 4.3gb one (CY? can't remember). Anyways, it ran for several years without a hitch, and then when I was in college it developed a strange symptom: when the computer was started from dead cold, the drive would "sing", like you were running your finger around the edge of a wine glass. It would only do this once the drive stepped to a certain spot on the disc. The drive accesses at that point would fail until the drive warmed up for about 5 minutes or so. I circumvented this by hitting the pause key during POST and waiting the five minutes before letting the system finish booting.

After about a year of this I started getting the ol' click of death and figured that if I didn't get the data off the drive soon, I wouldn't get a chance. So, I went to Best Buy and picked up a brand-new Maxtor 3.5" drive, and successfully transferred everything off of the drive. A couple days later, the BRAND NEW DRIVE FAILED, and the data on the Quantum was only partially recoverable (thankfully most of the damage was in the OS section). I did the ol' take apart thing, and discovered that under the warranty void label in line with the head pivot, the nut had completely backed off! I tightened that back down and the singing sound went away.

Who knows how long it would have lasted if I had done that sooner. lol.
 
Wow...

From many of these anecdotes one would get the idea that those Quantum Bigfoots were actually a lot more resilient than we give them credit for... :biggrin:
 
MikeS said:
Considering their size, weight and speed they oughta be...
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I've got a couple of 8GB ones here that have run just fine for years. I even ran my server for a few years 24/7 from one.

In my case, I don't think the HDA on the 4.3GB CY is bad--I think it's the electronics PCB, as the thing doesn't even try to spin when power is applied. If someone has an old CY drive that's gone toes-toward-the-sky and wouldn't mind sending me the PCB from it, I might not mind resurrecting mine. It'd keep it out of the landfill.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I've got a couple of 8GB ones here that have run just fine for years. I even ran my server for a few years 24/7 from one.

In my case, I don't think the HDA on the 4.3GB CY is bad--I think it's the electronics PCB, as the thing doesn't even try to spin when power is applied. If someone has an old CY drive that's gone toes-toward-the-sky and wouldn't mind sending me the PCB from it, I might not mind resurrecting mine. It'd keep it out of the landfill.
Click to expand...
As a matter of fact I think I have a 4.3GB unit somewhere that's R.I.P. in limbo waiting to go to hard disk heaven (i.e. some third-world 'recycler') - let me look around.
 
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