Drive Bench: Vintage Seagate ST-4038 - In the PC

I power up the Seagate ST-4038 in my 386 PC.
Before airing this video I had to perform a low-level format before the drive would be recognised.
I took that chance to install MS-DOS 4.01 to it.
Once I had everything squared away, I tested it as you see here!

Note, it passed the Disk Doctor scan after that one partition error.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• hard
• drive
• vintage
• bench
• test
• seagate
• st-4038
• pc
• old
• hdtune

[FerralVideo]

@MrComputerfan

Yes.

Since I created this video, I must have knocked off a component or two while handling it. It now makes a *SHUNK* sound after spinning up, instead of the seek-test. I doubt it'd do anything in the PC anymore. Sad, really...

[FerralVideo]

@benposeno - A voicecoil drive is one where a coil, similar to the one in your speakers, is wedged between two very high power magnets. A current passed through this coil causes the head arm to jerk across the platters. Special coding on the platters tells the heads where they are. All modern hard drives use this style.

On the flip side, a stepper motor drive uses a stepping motor, like in a floppy drive. It knows where it is based on how many steps it's made.

[obiwankenobi28]

so this HDD is like just under 4 real Mega Btyes in size which would be 4038 KB? or is it larger?

[FerralVideo]

No. The 4038 is merely a model number. The drive actually holds 31 megabytes. 39 unformatted. ... That's a lot of formatting...

[cr1901]

@Messerschmitt262a2a I've open one of these up before and can verify that it's a voice coil drive which uses an actuator carriage instead of an actuator arm. I kept the carriage assembly after I scrapped the drive (I accidentally killed it T_T) for use in hobby projects. I should have pictures somewhere.

[MrComputerfan]

@FerralVideo Is the ST-4038 dead?

[rodneyjayl]

Nice job - good audio comments. Thanks.

I have one of these babies. It is a little dirty as it's been in the attic for a number of years.

[cr1901]

@FerralVideo ST-4038 is a voice coil drive. It may be slower than some stepper motor drives because it uses an read/write head carriage instead of an actuator arm to move the heads.

[benposeno]

@FerralVideo dont think im stupid but what is a voice coil drive

[the731272]

i think it should be ok it just said free space

[Messerschmitt262a2a]

what model number has that 1,2mb 5,25" floppy drive?