Kind of OT but were they really that bad? Maybe I was lucky because my 20 GB HDD from back in 1990's worked fine and I even still have it somewhere in the house as a relic 
I am sure that such things were of much better quality than they are today, because they were made to last - and today they are made to break down within a certain period of time. I also have a lot of old electronics that are over 20 years old and mostly still functional.