What Drive is this ? Generic branded QUantum

[Clocker]

I bought this drive on eBay for $40 shipped. It is 20GB. ATA100. I'm guessing it is 5400RPM but I'm not sure.

My motherboard BIOS identifies this drive as "Generic A8E.P100" upon boot up.

It would probably be a decent drive if the seller didn't ship it in a padded envelope (no shit it is true!). Whenever I run HDTach, it makes an odd chip now and then and pauses. I was going to put this drive in my father-in-law's box for extra space but I don't dare put this POS in there now.

Anyway, the chips on the PCB say Quantum but I have no idea which model this drive is. Any ideas???? Maybe HDTach will help jar a memory out there:

Clocker

 

[NRG = mc²]

Looks like an LCT from the monumental access times

 

[Clocker]

MUCH bigger pictures here:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/kevharper/

 

[Clocker]

Yeps. It's a POS LCT20

 

[CougTek]

It might be a POS if you only consider the performances, but the LCT were quite reliable IIRC. Besides, it must not have been such a bad drive cause Seagate almost copy/paste the idea with their U-series (which aren't any faster than your 40$ Quantum). And there are people who buys Seagate's U-series drives (you gotta wonder what they are thinking though).

 

[Clocker]

If it only had not gone through the mail in nothing but a padded envelope and was not making the occasional weird noise, I might trust. It is amazing it made it though the mail functioning at all!

 

[Tannin]

It's a Quantum allright. Not only does it look exactly like an LCT, it says "made in Japan" and Quantum were the only desktop hard drive manufacturer in that country.

Given their 4400 RPM spin rate, they were actually not a bad drive. Certainly no worse than a U Series Seagate, possibly better.

But what is the story behind the strange labelling? It's quite bizarre to go round actually putting "generic" on the label.

Good one Clocker!

 

[Mercutio]

LCTs have been sold, in the US at least, as extremely low-cost (40GB for $59.99) store-branded hard disks in at Best Buy and CompUSA, at least in the US. Perhaps Clocker's drive was one of those. The "generic" marking would probably be sufficiently distinct to prevent end-users from seeking a Quantum warranty repair on one.

If you don't trust it, C, I'll take it off your hands. I need something for a portable enclosure anyway.

 

[Clocker]

Merc-

I would definitely have given you the drive if you wanted it but the seller has already given me a full refund. I have to send the POS back to him now...

C

 

[Corvair]

...it says "made in Japan" and Quantum were the only desktop hard drive manufacturer in that country...

Have Toshiba, NEC, and Sony all exited the desktop hard drive manufacturing market?

At work, I once had a 700+ MB 3.5 inch Toshiba narrow SCSI-2 hard drive connected to a Macintosh IIcx. It started seized up occasionally after a year. I resorted to hitting its external case with my fist (as it was being powered) to get it to spin up. Eventually, it got worse to where I had to do my trick every time I needed it to start. One day it would not start at all. After a bunch of this'n'that savagery with the fist, I took a ball peen hammer and began hitting it progressively harder (under power). I finally hit it so hard right on top of drive casing where the upper spindle bearing was that I thought for sure that the casing had probably cracked. Instead, the drive began working perfectly, and never had another seizing problem again!

 

[CougTek]

AFAIK, NEC has left hard disk drives business a few years ago, which is a good thing IMO because their drives were about as reliable as IMB 75GXP.

Toshiba sells 2.5" notebook drives and I think their products are pretty good. They don't sell desktop drives anymore.

I never saw a Sony HDD.

It started seized up occasionally after a year. I resorted to hitting its external case with my fist (as it was being powered) to get it to spin up. Eventually, it got worse to where I had to do my trick every time I needed it to start. One day it would not start at all. After a bunch of this'n'that savagery with the fist, I took a ball peen hammer and began hitting it progressively harder (under power). I finally hit it so hard right on top of drive casing where the upper spindle bearing was that I thought for sure that the casing had probably cracked. Instead, the drive began working perfectly, and never had another seizing problem again!

I'm glad to learn I'm not the only one who ressort to these kind of methods to fix some of my hardware problems

 

[CougTek]

Can someone please edit my previous post and correct the word "resort". It hurts my eyes to see that, I can't stand looking at my monitor anymore. Ouch! Ouch! Please, someone.

 

[Mercutio]

I dimly recall Sony narrow SCSI hard disks living in some of the more ancient varieties of Macintoshes.

 

[Tannin]

I'm pretty sure that Toshiba and Sony have exited the desktop drive business many years ago. Last time I saw an NEC drive new, it was one of these:

As for made in Japan ...

This was around about the time that NEC signed a bit design and component manufacturing agreement with IBM. But I imagine that that has lapsed now - it was quite a while ago.