HP 185252-001 4.2GB Ultra SCSI 3.5-Inch Hard Drive

Product Description

The HP 185252-001 is an internal hard disk drive with a storage capacity of 4.2 Gigabytes, utilizing the Ultra SCSI interface. This interface, also known as Fast-20, offered a significant improvement over earlier SCSI standards, providing a maximum theoretical data transfer rate of 20 Megabytes per second per channel, and up to 40 MB/s in some configurations. The drive is housed in a standard 3.5-inch form factor, making it compatible with a wide range of server and workstation systems that were prevalent during the era when SCSI was the dominant interface for high-performance storage. This drive was typically designed for reliability and consistent performance in multi-user environments. While specific spindle speed details can vary for this part number depending on the manufacturer's revision, drives of this capacity and interface often operated at rotational speeds such as 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM. Higher RPM drives offer faster data access due to reduced rotational latency, but lower RPM drives can sometimes offer benefits in terms of lower power consumption and heat generation. The average seek time for such drives would generally be in the range of 8 to 10 milliseconds, which, while slower than modern drives, was competitive for its time and suitable for many server tasks. The HP 185252-001 represents a piece of legacy storage technology, essential for maintaining or upgrading older systems that rely on SCSI connectivity. Its primary use case was in entry-level to mid-range servers and workstations where a balance of performance, reliability, and cost was required. The SCSI interface itself offered advantages such as command queuing and support for multiple devices on a single bus, which were beneficial for server workloads. This drive would have been a common component in systems used for file serving, application hosting, or as boot drives in environments that predated the widespread adoption of SATA and SAS interfaces.