I'm curious about those last-gasp 120 MB Kalok/Xebec drives, but not curious enough to pay the hundreds of dollars that eBay sellers are asking for them.
Seagate was able to make some very fast, quiet, and reliable 3.5" stepper-motor drives, like the ST-351A/X. But given their track record, I don't think Kalok would've been able to pull that off. If it's the same old rickety Octagon mechanicals, just like higher data density and an IDE-AT interface, then I'd steer clear.
Most of these sellers (Keyword: Most) with parts priced that way will take much, much lower offers. If you save a search some will eventually turn up, too, but if you want one soon-ish just shoot them a message asking for photos, then make some kind of reasonable offer. This is how I got my XE-3080, I sent an offer for $30 on a part listed for $200 as a long shot - We settled on $40 and for the cost of additional shipping he even threw in the non-working KL-3120 mentioned above.
They are mechanically identical inside, with a rotary band swing arm positioner. They share the exact same spindle, swing arm, chassis, and rotary band. The platters I'm sure are the same substrate underneath, but they have the more modern chrome/cobalt coating as opposed to the older 3350 style ferrous oxide coating the Octagon I drives had. They also have the newer thin film heads to get better data density out of this new material. They only have 4 heads just like the Octagon I series, but there is some rather extreme sector translation somewhere.
Aside from the heads and media type changes, the only two primary changes to these drives were the lower impedance steppers for faster access times and the new pseudo-servo system, which involves microstepping error correction based on very simple feedback from the disk surfaces. If you listen closely to an Octagon II in operation, you can actually hear this behavior sitting idle on a data track - The heads attempt to follow the platter, and it does an alright job. I would say that this puts them at the same level of reliability, or at least only slightly lower than the Octagon I.
If you just want a Kalok drive with ATA/IDE, you could always go for a KL-343, which is much lower data density and while lacking the servo tracking, probably works just fine. Otherwise you could invest in something like a WD1003IWH and hitch it up to a KL-320 or KL-330 that way.
The ST-325 and ST-351 are very interesting drives - Some of the only slimline stepper hard disks ever made. The only other models I'm aware of are the Daeyoung DX-3100 and DX-3120 mentioned in my first post, both of which are drives I would love to have in my collection someday, but sellers of those units really, really do not seem to want to come down on price. Of the two listed on eBay right now, one said he won't take a penny less than $140 and the other wants $80 for an untested unit that is covered in rust - He even told me it came out of a computer he found in the trash. I will never understand some people.
some people...
