Such a pessimistic viewpoint could be construed as suggesting: "the work of archeologists and historians is also in vain -- let us therefore utilize our time more wisely in other more meaningful pursuits."
The general answer to that question is quite obviously: "that which I presently do not know." And more specifically: "more details surrounding the company who created the drive, their customers, drive failure rates, what resulted in their swift demise rather than continued success in the drive market, more on the history of GCC and what drives they choose and why, etc." We can speculate the answers, but that is often very different than hearing stories from the horse's mouth.
Inquiring minds like mine want to know these things even when others say "the answers are no where to be found, utterly impossible to unearth, and they are completely uninteresting and non-beneficial to us today anyway." It would appear that on the internet those answers are not to be found, but there are paper periodicals in numerous libraries around the nation that have yet to be digitized and put online. Furthermore, there are individuals out there on the net who once had an affiliation with GCC (and perhaps even MMI) who are still alive today and who by accidental Googling come across discussion threads like this one and then are inspired to post their experience or make contact privately. Had I never posted my GCC HyperDrive photos on Flickr or wrote such details beneath the photo, I never would have received contact by a GCC dealer! And I for one find it fascinating to engage in dialog with those who had first-hand experience with these vintage devices "back in the day." Being able to talk to these people about their experiences from the past makes ownership of a vintage computing device all the more interesting; at least, interesting to me.
And so I cannot help but feel strongly that by keeping our mouths firmly shut and never asking oddball questions, we learn nothing. It would seem that I risk the wrath of those who dislike such questions and/or who especially dislike my unrelenting persistence in asking the questions. But that is part of the risk I must take in unearthing answers, especially since I am not located in the United States where I would library access to English language US periodicals from the past. And in some small way, I must admit that the quest for those answers is as much a fulfilling job as getting the answers themselves. I may not be unearthing gold coins which have practical value and use today, but I am unearthing a little of the past which is interesting to me, and I hope is interesting to a few of you out there as well.
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-dark-night-soul-poem-curiosity-1042935.html
In any event, I certainly do not wish to appear ungrateful, nor do I harbor any ill will. The recently discussion in this thread between yourself and Mac128 about IDE, ISA, ESDI and ST-506 "category" drives was a very informative, educational and interesting read. Thank you very much for that, Gorgonops.