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Anyone know what brand of SCSI hard drives are the most reliable?

J

Jothaboss

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 25, 2018
3
0
I have a Macintosh SE super drive and I am looking to purchase a SCSI hard drive for it. I am wondering if I should get and original Miniscribe stepper motor hard drive or a Rodime R0652 hard drive. I am trying to get the most reliable out of the two because I am tired of returning parts that have broken within an hour of use. Also all Quantum hard drives are out of the question because at most I have gotten 1 hour out of one of those drives. If there are other brands of reliable SCSI hard drives that I don't know about please let me know.
 
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I guess I should have been more clear in my explanation because I already know that no one makes SCSI hard drives any more. Also the actual hard drives in a sense work better that hard drive emulators in a sense because most of the time the adapters I buy don't work in my SE while the real hard drive do work but die after 30 minutes. That could possibly be because I only have bought those stupid quantum drives and have seen stepper motor drives are a lot more reliable. Another thing is that I just love old hard drives and the sound they make and have always despised hard drives emulators since the day I found out about them. I would also like to keep every thing inside the computer so an external case would not be ideal. However I have taken your advice into consideration and that will be my last resort option.
 
Jothaboss said:
I have a Macintosh SE super drive and I am looking to purchase a SCSI hard drive for it. I am wondering if I should get and original Miniscribe stepper motor hard drive or a Rodime R0652 hard drive. I am trying to get the most reliable out of the two because I am tired of returning parts that have broken within an hour of use. Also all Quantum hard drives are out of the question because at most I have gotten 1 hour out of one of those drives. If there are other brands of reliable SCSI hard drives that I don't know about please let me know.
Click to expand...

I have had the best results from WD drives and the worst from Compaq/IBM in just getting the SE to see them. Your choices will be limited by compatibility issues. I don't think there is much value trying to replicate the old Miniscribe drives given their age and the unreasonable cost of other ageing low capacity drives these days. I have a more modern 4GB SCA drive whirring away happily in one of mine and a 9GB U320 in the other.

You can boot and run the SE quite happily from a Zip or a Jaz drive, too, if you like the sound of spinning hardware.
 
Many of the old Quantum & Conner half-height drives are failing due to perished rubber bumpers within the sealed HDA.

If you can find full height Quantum or Miniscribe drives, they will need to be thoroughly tested for bad blocks. Bear in mind that these drives may have other failures pending.

As for what is more reliable, with items of this age, it's becoming pot-luck to find reliable original equipment.

If you do get a full-height 40MB or 80MB Quantum, ensure it has the later 28 Pin ROM version "TA.2 01" - most of these drives shipped inside external Apple 40 or 80SC cases, but many may have been retro-fitted as internals on Mac SEs.

Any drives that you can get that have an Apple Logo will make life somewhat easier, since Apple's formatting tools will work with them, otherwise you'll need to source third party formatting tools.

Whilst I appreciate the thought of keeping the machine original, AND avoiding slightly later drives with internal rubber, it IS possible to fit much later drives.

Hopefully, some or all of this helps. :)
 
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