@hybotics This is the kind of thing that gets thrown into my lap constantly. I'm assuming he has kept it going so long by using an old copy of Spinrite or some such because if he hasn't, the data would be a garbled mess by now. Stepper motor actuator + Florida heat and humidity.
He is running a business off that system.
That particular drive was notorious for tossing cookies. It doesn't even have autopark heads going for it. (The 251-1 revision did).
And it's is so depressing that I remember so much useless information. I need to curate a museum or something. :D
The first hard drive I was exposed to and got to use was a Corvus tabletop drive. 5MB. If you programmed it to do a lot of end to end seeks, the desk would wobble. It had a data transfer rate that wasn't much better than a floppy drive.
I'm getting all nostalgic now :D
// @jextxadore