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Quantum's marketing for their BigFoot 5.25" drives was interesting. They argued that a 3600 RPM drive was as fast as 5400 RPM 3.5" drive because you're spinnin
by bluedino 5y ago
Quantum's marketing for their BigFoot 5.25" drives was interesting.
They argued that a 3600 RPM drive was as fast as 5400 RPM 3.5" drive because you're spinning a larger diameter platter. Technically true.
They also claimed that since you could fit more data on a track, since it was larger, you would do less seeking, and that's what makes mechanical hard drives slow.
This didn't stop BigFoot drives from being slower than 3.5" drives that were 3 years older and 1/4 of the capacity.
- h2odragon 5y agoI loved my bigfoot drives. Yes they were slow, but they was cheap and ran cool and (excepting certain lines) proved amazingly durable. As in, "ran as the mail spool disk for a decade" for a system sending ~5k emails a day. That one i think i still have on a shelf here somewhere with a "well done thou faithful servant" postit note
- bluedino 5y agoIn my time doing tech support and repair, they were probably the most replaced drive to failure that I ever experienced. At least until the Deathstars came out.
- h2odragon 5y agoI think i was buying refurbs then. as i recall the issue was with the controller boards. i know a bunch got used as cheap system/boot disks on alphas at CGI render farms, too: some of my stock came from surplus "Titanic" render nodes. I recall they had special cases for them; 24 pack pink foam crates. I had at least two of the crates...
- bluedino 5y agoCompaq must have been a big buyer of them at the time - they used them in quite a few Presario models (home models, cost cutting I'm sure)
- GekkePrutser 5y agoYes I remember those foam crates. 10% of a new crate of Bigfoots were DOA right out of the box. But I guess the ones that lasted more than a week were much more likely to last years.