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What could this MFM harddrive be worth?

It's not a rare drive--I think I even have one in a CP/M machine here--and I used to use one on a PC until it went toes-up. Historically, it's no more significant than any other MFM drive.

Hard to say.
 
It may not work. I power up my box of hard drives every now and then to prevent the heads from sticking and such. From sitting for...well, forever it may not even spin up anymore. I just recently found my old full size Seagate SCSI drive wouldn't spin up at all, just what sounds like a power relay clicking, haven't put too much work into it as I haven't had any use for it.
 
That is a good QA kept drive. Good, clean MFM cables won't make scratches on it if you gently slide the cables onto the connecors.

It kind of resembles a Western Digital WD-384R.
 
Take its weight and multiply it by the price of the metal it's made of. Now subtract your opportunity cost to get it sold.

I think all in all it has a negative value.

I have and XT-IDE card for a reason.
 
Elvi said:
Shame really as it's a nice museum piece.
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When you think about it, describing a hard drive as a museum piece can be likened to we computer enthusiasts finding a vintage washing machine forum, and in that forum is a member describing a water pump they have as being a possible museum piece. :)
 
Just tested to connect the drive and power it on *scary* i never expected this but when i turned it on, the thing literary shook the table it was standing on, standing on some anti static shilding plastic ofcourse ;) and it's laud ass hell, almost sounds like a chainsaw lol
I see 2 red leds on it's front, no idea what that means but before i turned off the pc it was connected to i tried to park it and actually heard a litle clonk so i guess that worked.

Oh right there was a BIG klonk when it started also so now i wonder what to try next? low level format it or something? or just leave it be as i'm proberly not gonna use it.
 
Ok so a litle news on this at 3:33am hehe well the drive seems to work albeit more noisy than my seagate st-225 anyway....
the settings don't seem to match on this page http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/rodime/RO204E-42MB-5-25-FH-MFM-ST506.html compared to what the bios said i should use so instead of:

Cylinders 640, Heads 8, Sector/track 32, Precompensation 0, Landing Zone 639
i used:
Cylinders 640, Heads 8, Sector/track 17, Precompensation 0, Landing Zone 639

the first one made the bios think that the drive was 80mb but the later mathes up at about 43mb and that seems to be right too, so the drive boots up or rather klonks heh but it's seen so i try a low level format on it with a seagate format program i found over here: version 4 http://ibm-pc.org/utilities/hdd/hdd.htm worked like a sharm and was faster than i expected, 15min maybe, after that a partitision with msdos 6.22 and normal format but that took long, proberly cause of the wrong interleave or something so i ran spinrite v3 from the same site and it got set to 2-to-1 i think.

So my conclusion is that this drive is fit even if it's never been used outside the factory :) unless someone of you have anything else to add and i probably gave it some scratches on the connectors now too but i guess i can live with that as long as they arn't too deap.
 
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That '32 sectors per track" is an error--my "Hard Drive BIble" says 640 cylinders, 8 heads, 17 sectors/track.

If you want the scratches on the connector to go away, get a soft cotton cloth like an old T-shirt and rub them off. No biggie.
 
Spinrite found some bad sectors but i guess that's to be suspected of these old mfm drives even from when they were made if i'm not totaly missinformed but it does seem to work properly and that's a good sign is it not?
 
To get back to your original question, any piece of old computer equipment is worth what someone who really needs it is willing to pay for it. If it is historically significant is not relevant, in the real world.

I have a client that will pay a very good buck for 20 MB full-height drives I come across and another that will pay well for any Panasonic 1.44 MB drive where the connectors are on the opposite sides from usual.

I had a university in Sweden pay $159 for a 386 desktop box and another $147 to ship it there.

The list goes on and on.

I have it and they need it and the reputation I've built up over the years lets them know that it will work to specs when they get it (unlike most things you'd get off FeeBay), so, they pay the price.
 
Elvi said:
Spinrite found some bad sectors but i guess that's to be suspected of these old mfm drives even from when they were made if i'm not totaly missinformed but it does seem to work properly and that's a good sign is it not?
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If it's a new drive, there will either be a label or a sheet of paper detailing the defect list. If the defects you've found match up with those on the list (at least as far as cylinder and head), then you're okay.
 
There is a sheet on the side of it but from what i can tell spinrite found 3 bad sectors and only 1 match up with the sheet, the sheet has info for 5 sectors, curious that spinrite didn't find that then but i'm not really surpriced considering how old it is.

Just to add, around here you don't stumble on these mfm drives very often, your lucky if you find 1, i know no collectors like me around here at all.

Btw Chuck is there any way i could get a copy of that "Hard Drive Bible"? ;)


I do feel a litle bad starting that hd, feel like i took away a litle of it's value and mystery by low level formating it.
 
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They're very common--and the information is duplicated in lots of places. Just google "Corporate Systems Center Hard Drive Bible"--they're all over the place for sale--even on eBay. At one point, CSC even distributed a CD with the book, but I'll have to find that and see what's on it.
 
Elvi said:
I do feel a litle bad starting that hd, feel like i took away a litle of it's value and mystery by low level formating it.
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You are wrong here. By using your kit you actually realized its value. Before, it was a piece of old junk. Now, it is your vintage working hard drive, and it now is part of your own vital experience. So it is much more valuable (to you) now than before.
 
Thanks Pepinno, that made me relax abit.

What programs do you guys use to lowlevel format your mfm drives and others? i'm curious cause i've used a seagate atm but it did have a custom field so you could put in the info but the format goes so fast so i wonder if it's going TOO fast, between 5-15 minutes.
 
Elvi said:
What programs do you guys use to lowlevel format your mfm drives and others?
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The low-level format technique used depends on the situation. For example, in the majority of cases, an 'autoconfigure' type controller in an XT requires that the user run the low-level format program within the controller's ROM. But in situations where generic software can be used, I use SpeedStor.

Elvi said:
i'm curious cause i've used a seagate atm but it did have a custom field so you could put in the info but the format goes so fast so i wonder if it's going TOO fast, between 5-15 minutes.
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Sounds about right to me. For a rough comparison, a Seagate ST412 (10MB) takes about 2 to 3 minutes. A number of factors are involved.
 
If you do go the software route, SpeedStor is a good one, and I've got other LLF utilities if you want.

SpeedStor calls it "Initializing" instead of low level formatting.
 
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