# giant hard disk



## sena (Jun 15, 2015)

Hi everyone , found this hard disk at a junk yard. It's 1.5 ft in length and weights around 8 kgs. Just wanna share the pic 8) 

Thanks 
Sena


----------



## macfixer01 (Jun 15, 2015)

Nice find, did it have a circuit board on it too? There are definitely some gold chips visible on that brown ribbon cable connected to the heads. I'd also look over the read/write heads themselves pretty well on a drive that old. There are likely gold wires on the arms that connect to them.


----------



## Smack (Jun 15, 2015)

I've got a few that size too, I like to hang on to some of the old stuff like this one. I know where the machine is that it goes in but the guy wants a bit more than I'm willing to pay, though he did tell me he still has the receipt for it when it was new with the install and all the terminals...$76,000.00. Take special note of the sticker in the second photo where it reads "Made in USA".


----------



## g_axelsson (Jun 16, 2015)

That's funny, I just got two disk drives that can read that disk, Smack. I got them with about 20 disks, all for free.
No, I didn't scrap them, they went straight into my computer collection.

8) 

Göran


----------



## glorycloud (Jun 16, 2015)

I bet that magnet in that giant hard drive would pinch your finger
off if you got it between a piece a metal and that magnet!! :shock:


----------



## Smack (Jun 16, 2015)

g_axelsson said:


> That's funny, I just got two disk drives that can read that disk, Smack. I got them with about 20 disks, all for free.
> No, I didn't scrap them, they went straight into my computer collection.
> 
> 8)
> ...



The one that guy I know has is the size of a large chest freezer.


----------



## goldsilverpro (Jun 16, 2015)

I was somewhat involved with these, mainly in the plating of the disks with gold or rhodium. I don't think all of them were PM plated, though. I think they made them as large as 48" dia. Called memory disks (or discs).


----------



## macfixer01 (Jun 18, 2015)

Smack, that looks like a removable disc pack for something like an old Control Data Hawk or Phoenix drive? When I started in computer repair back in the early 80's it was the very tail end of the S100 systems and a lot of CPM systems were still popular. The dealer I worked for still sold Altos and Alpha Micro systems which used such drives. I never worked on them myself, the senior tech who was a really gruff former Air Force guy handled those. Funny I can recall seeing diagrams showing how smoke particles looked like boulders compared to the distances the heads flew over the disc surfaces. Yet people would bring them in hoping to recover any data possible, with a thick layer of dust and dirt just covering the upper disc surfaces!


----------



## g_axelsson (Jun 23, 2015)

A bad picture, but these are my two new Control Data Hawk disks.


The drives are mounted on top of cabinets and the covers are removed. On the one in the back you can see the disk pack mounted as protection.

On top there is two 19" racks which is a ND-10 CPU (the cabling is in the box on top of the front disk) and a bunch of big ND-100 cards.

This is all part of my classic computing collection now.

Göran


----------



## glorycloud (Jun 23, 2015)

Do you have any of the big 8" floppy drives yet? I have two or three that I have been hanging on to
that came out of IBM controllers I think. 8)


----------



## macfixer01 (Jun 23, 2015)

g_axelsson said:


> A bad picture, but these are my two new Control Data Hawk disks.
> 
> The drives are mounted on top of cabinets and the covers are removed. On the one in the back you can see the disk pack mounted as protection.
> 
> ...




Very nice find Göran!


----------



## g_axelsson (Jun 24, 2015)

I think that I must have at least ten 8-inch floppy drives in my collection. One I'm trying to connect to a linux pc, but I was missing a connector so that project is on hold currently. Something to do on a rainy day. 8) 

Göran


----------

