Quantum Bigfoot (hard drive)

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The Bigfoot hard drive was a brand of hard disk marketed by Quantum Corporation in the late-1990s which featured a larger physical size than hard disks typical at the time. Typical hard drives are 3.5" in diameter, while Bigfoot hard drives were 5.25" wide and fit in a standard IBM PC drive bay. The main rationale behind the design change was that the typical PC user already owns cases that made provision for a 5.25" drive, and by using lower data densities and a larger physical size, Quantum was able to deliver the products at lower prices, thus more competitively.

Bigfoot drives were initially a success, earning inclusion in low-end stock PCs such as ones manufactured by Compaq as well as being popular with the PC enthusiast community. However, Quantum replaced the Bigfoot product line with the Fireball product line sometime in the late 1990s.

Larger disk drives tend to have higher costs in materials and have slower access times and increased noise levels, due to the larger distances the drive head must travel before being able to access the data stored on the platter. These may have been the reasons for Quantum's move away from the Bigfoot drives.

Bigfoot drives were produced in capacities of 1.28GB, 1.6GB, 2.1GB, 2.5GB, (single platter) 3.2GB, 4.3GB, 6.8GB, 8.0GB, 10.0GB, 13.0GB, 19.2GB(double platter) and were produced by a variety of different plants in Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and other locations. The interface with the computer was an ATA-3 interface. Bigfoot drives were amongst the first to support Logical Block Addressing (LBA) and Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) monitoring.