This is an early IDE hard drive, storing 50 MB. The drive has two platters, however, the top platter is a dummy made of plastic. The real platter, which is underneath the dummy. One theory is that Quantum had a 50 MB and 100 MB drive made from the same parts - but the 100 MB drive would have two real platters with four read heads.

This drive was actually run on a live computer with the drive's cover removed. It was a commonly held belief that a hard drive could only run 2-3 minutes with a cover off because dust particles would crash the heads. This drive ran for 30 minutes straight while doing a defrag on it with no errors. At 40 minutes there were some errors, and at 45 minutes it had quit working all together.

This item as donated by Dan Dixon.