Category Archives: Seagate

Learn Something Old Every Day

More or less by accident I found myself writing a very basic DOS utility to read data off of an IDE drive. It started out by just issuing the IDENTIFY DRIVE command and capturing the data, but adding the ability … Continue reading

Posted in Documentation, PC hardware, PC history, Seagate, Storage | 3 Comments

Decoding Seagate Date Codes

More or less everyone knows that throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Seagate did not label their drives with a date of manufacture like everyone sane would do, but instead used a custom and somewhat mysterious/confusing “date code”. For reasons that … Continue reading

Posted in PC history, Seagate, Storage | Leave a comment

Percussive Maintenance

A couple of weeks ago this antique 1997 Cheetah 9 drive showed up at the OS/2 Museum: It was effectively a freebie, a faulty drive bought together with another, more desirable, and working drive. (Well, initially working, but that’s a … Continue reading

Posted in Hardware Hacks, Seagate | 7 Comments

Those Lot Numbers are Old

The other day I was trying to decode the “lot numbers” printed on certain Seagate drives. In the meantime, I realized that those lot numbers have been in use for quite some time. They were in use around 2000, like … Continue reading

Posted in PC history, Seagate | 11 Comments

Seagate Serial Talk

Some time ago, the OS/2 Museum obtained a 10 GB Seagate ST310014ACE hard disk (IDE 3.5″ low profile). The disk was unusable because it was locked. That is, it needed an unknown password to gain access to the medium. After … Continue reading

Posted in Hardware Hacks, PC hardware, Seagate | 19 Comments

Seagate Cheetah Date of Manufacture

Lately I found myself in the possession of several Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 SAS drives. These represent the pinnacle of hard disk engineering; with 15,000 RPM, the drives deliver up to around 200 MB/s sustained throughput (both read and write!) and … Continue reading

Posted in Seagate, Storage, Undocumented | Leave a comment