Arthur Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Source: TechPowerUp Western Digital is expected to end shipments of parallel-ATA (PATA or legacy ATA) hard drives from 29 December 2013. The company maintained a small lineup of PATA hard drives in its product stack, to cater to people with older laptops looking for hard drive upgrades, and whoever else may be using the old standard that was blasted into obsolescence exactly a decade ago, with the introduction of SATA and AHCI. Product discontinuation notifications (PDNs) for the company's last Caviar PATA hard drives, bearing model numbers WD800AAJB (80 GB), WD1600AAJB (160 GB), WD2500AAJB (250 GB), WD3200AAJB (320 GB), WD4000AAJB (400 GB), and WD5000AAJB (500 GB) were issued this may, soliciting the last orders from OEMs and distributors. The last of those orders will be fulfilled by the 29th, when the drives will enter end-of-life (EOL) state. The company will only honor active warranties from then on. http://i.imgur.com/TJpaXTt.jpg
Arthur Posted December 23, 2013 Author Posted December 23, 2013 Good riddens riddance. Indeed. Too slow these days. We have quite a few old PCs with PATA HDDs in them. If Seagate follows suit it could make buying replacements difficult, although that could be used as an excuse to replace the entire computer.
free780 Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Do the pcs have floppy drives? Or a flux capicator?
mac_shinobi Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Do the pcs have floppy drives? Or a flux capicator? Thought optical drives were replacing floppy drives ? I'm not even going to try and get upto 88mph as I'd most likely get a speeding ticket / fined / points etc ( sods law )
free780 Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 According to apple optical drives are dead. Yet people still put parrell ports on motherboards.
twin--turbo Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Indeed. We have quite a few old PCs with PATA HDDs in them. If Seagate follows suit it could make buying replacements difficult, although that could be used as an excuse to replace the entire computer. Just buy a £3 sata card off ebay. Having spent many hours wiping HDD's I can tell you that there is a masssive performance difference between Identical physical units running PATA vs SATA drive electronics. Rob
Arthur Posted December 23, 2013 Author Posted December 23, 2013 Do the PCs have floppy drives? Nope. They're not that old! Unfortunately we have a lot of Core 2 Duo laptops purchased mid-2007 that came with PATA HDDs (from RM ). If they could be upgraded with SSDs, performance wouldn't be that bad. We'll have to get rid of them now. According to Apple, optical drives are dead. They are dead. Yet people still put parallel ports on motherboards. For some reason the PC industry loves legacy ports. Serial, parallel, VGA and DVI ports should be banished from existence.
Arthur Posted December 23, 2013 Author Posted December 23, 2013 Just buy a £3 sata card off eBay. I wish we could do that. Sadly, they're laptops.
twin--turbo Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 I wish we could do that. Sadly, they're laptops. Buy an IDE SSD or an IDE to 2.5" to Msata converter and Msata drive.
free780 Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Ide ssd. Its like putting a jet engine in a skoda.
Arthur Posted December 23, 2013 Author Posted December 23, 2013 Buy an IDE SSD Most of them are rubbish though. or an IDE to 2.5" to mSATA converter and mSATA drive. I think I'll try one of these plus a 2.5" SATA SSD. At least the SSD could be re-used somewhere else. Given the age of the computers however, I think the money might be better spent towards their replacements.
mac_shinobi Posted December 24, 2013 Posted December 24, 2013 Most of them are rubbish though. I think I'll try one of these plus a 2.5" SATA SSD. At least the SSD could be re-used somewhere else. Given the age of the computers however, I think the money might be better spent towards their replacements. Presume that is similar to ( not the same ) as the OWC Data Doubler ( Mount 2.5 ) - although converting the optical drive connectors ( power & or data ) to SATA power and data ?
Arthur Posted December 24, 2013 Author Posted December 24, 2013 Presume that is similar to (not the same) as the OWC Data Doubler Yeah. Same concept. The adapter converts SATA to JAE 50 (I think that's the correct name for the connector?) via a bridge chip.
mac_shinobi Posted December 24, 2013 Posted December 24, 2013 Yeah. Same concept. The adapter converts SATA to JAE 50 (I think that's the correct name for the connector?) via a bridge chip. Not related but just wanted to say thanks to everyone including yourself for all the help ( past, present and no doubt future ) and hope you all have a great Christmas and new year
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now