The End of the Line for IDE Hard Drives

Mon Jul 30, 2007 6:11PM EDT

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If you have an older PC, you're probably familiar with the wide, gray, ribbon-like cables that connect your hard drive to your motherboard. Those are IDE (also known as Parallel ATA or PATA, or just ATA) connectors, part of a technology that has endured for 20 years. And now, with the great success of Serial ATA (SATA) technology becoming apparent, old IDE is about to reach the end of the line: Seagate has become the first hard drive company to announce it will stop making IDE drives by the end of the year. Most of the other IDE makers will likely follow suit in 2008-09.

While this is the simple result of an old technology finally being put out to pasture as a new technology becomes available (SATA is superior in a number of ways and already owns 2/3 of the desktop market), there are some side effects that you might need to consider if you plan on keeping your old computer around for the rest of the decade. The big one is compatibility: SATA drives won't work with old IDE motherboards, so if your IDE drive crashes, finding a replacement will become more difficult. As time wears on, you'll likely have to turn to used drives instead of new ones, which will be even more likely to fail. Upgrading to the newer technology can still be done with a SATA add-in card or a USB or FireWire connection, but many older PCs have trouble booting from non-motherboard-connected drives, and performance will be slower.

Bottom line: Got an old PC with a rickety hard drive? Unless you want to get an entirely new computer, you might put a hard drive upgrade on your shopping list this Christmas.

LINK: Seagate plans to stop manufacturing IDE drives by year end 

Comments on The End of the Line for IDE Hard Drives

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  • 2 Posted by rogueist on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:49PM EDT Report Abuse

    Yeah, all the new PCs have SATA drives in them. Any IDE drives I still have kicking around are in external drive cases now, and I am looking into switching to external SATA cases as well. Does anyone have any long-range results of MTBF for SATA drives? These current IDE drives are not lasting beyond 1 1/2 years of solid use anymore.

  • 3 Posted by jirojas on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:35PM EDT Report Abuse

    IDE lasted long enough. SCSI, SATA and SAS will be the way to go.

  • 4 Posted by slimeslayer on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:27PM EDT Report Abuse

    i've converted all of my old IDE drives to external USB drives which make great backup devices...

  • 5 Posted by crajos on Wed Aug 8, 2007 9:04PM EDT Report Abuse

    Yeah...I knew it was on it's way out. I have a SATA hard drive and DVD burner anyway. I couldn't see choosing IDE for either when I bought them. You just have to make sure you have a newer motherboard with a good SATA controller on it.

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