I had a 20MB HDD in my 8088!
I had a small(ish) MFM drive formatted out to RLL specs. Don't remember the exact capacity but it was probably something like 10MB formatted out to 15MB. Because I (we) were abusing the media the drive had to be error checked fairly frequently and that took the better part of 24 hrs.
Around the same time I also had a small(ish) drive with a weak drive motor that wouldn't start on it's own... back then the drive spindle was accessible between the case and the PCB so I could use a Popsicle stick to get it spinning before hitting the power button.
edit: I also remember having to buy my first 1GB drive so that I could fit the DII expansion pack onto my system.