Monday, December 23rd 2013

Western Digital to Stop Shipping PATA Hard Drives

by
btarunr
 Discuss (29 Comments)
Western Digital is expected to end shipments of parallel-ATA (PATA or legacy ATA) hard drives from December 29, 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.
Source: Expreview

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29 Comments on Western Digital to Stop Shipping PATA Hard Drives

#1
micropage7
officially pata is out of the way, since most now using sata interface
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#2
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
micropage7officially pata is out of the way, since most now using sata interface
You don't say?
Posted on Reply
#3
LiveOrDie
Aww what im a going to do when my 486 drive dies now LMAO.
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#4
arterius2
micropage7officially pata is out of the way, since most now using sata interface
and the grass is green, and today I ate a chicken sandwich and it was good.
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#5
TheDeeGee
Never knew it was called "PATA", always called them IDE Drives.
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#6
ensabrenoir
....didn't realize they were still making those things....who were the consumers?
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#7
Jetster
Parallel ATA and Serial ATA have evloved from IDE. Its just still used as a common term for the PATA. And im sure there are a ton of stock around
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#8
repman244
ensabrenoir....didn't realize they were still making those things....who were the consumers?
Probably people with older computers or even companies with older systems. I know that my Uni still uses some really ancient computers (I think I saw some Pentium 2/3 and even an MMX) - but those are few and are used where you would see absolutely no benefit from anything faster.
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#9
qubit
Overclocked quantum bit
That piccie of a 160GB drive. So quaint now, lol. I remember getting a "gargantuan" 80GB drive back in the day. :laugh:
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#11
SeventhReign
ensabrenoir....didn't realize they were still making those things....who were the consumers?
3 of my 7 working Desktops have IDE/PATA HDD's installed.
Posted on Reply
#12
Sasqui
qubitThat piccie of a 160GB drive. So quaint now, lol. I remember getting a "gargantuan" 80GB drive back in the day. :laugh:
Geez and I thought my 4GB SCSI drive was ginormous!
Posted on Reply
#13
rooivalk
qubitThat piccie of a 160GB drive. So quaint now, lol. I remember getting a "gargantuan" 80GB drive back in the day. :laugh:
It's relative measure. At the time, OS and its softwares don't need tens of GB like now.
Maybe just 2-3GB for OS, few hundreds MB for production softwares and 1-2GB for AAA games. Compared to now that win8 64 ask for 20GB, 2.5GB for Photoshop CC, and 30GB+ for Battlefield 4.
Posted on Reply
#14
qubit
Overclocked quantum bit
SasquiGeez and I thought my 4GB SCSI drive was ginormous!
Oh, I've got a Conner 10MB ST506 HDD knocking around somewhere! It's actually got a stepper motor and it sits externally to the platter and heads.
rooivalkIt's relative measure. At the time, OS and its softwares don't need tens of GB like now.
Maybe just 2-3GB for OS, few hundreds MB for production softwares and 1-2GB for AAA games. Compared to now that win8 64 ask for 20GB, 2.5GB for Photoshop CC, and 30GB+ for Battlefield 4.
Yeah sure. The feeling of looking back at those things from our perspective now is nice. :)
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#15
Jetster
I remember going from a 20 Mb hard drive to a 600 Mb and thinking I will never be able to fill this thing up. Crap I'm old. You can get a 160Gb IDE drive now for less than $20
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#16
xvi
Live OR DieAww what im a going to do when my 486 drive dies now LMAO.
SATA to PATA interfaces exist. I can't comment on how compatible they are with older hardware, but I'm willing to bet that DOS 6.22 will HAUL on a SSD. :laugh:
SvarogNever knew it was called "PATA", always called them IDE Drives.
Yep. Parallel ATA. I had to look this up on Wikipedia for more detail, but: "The first version of what is now called the ATA/ATAPI interface was developed by Western Digital under the name Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE)."
SeventhReign3 of my 7 working Desktops have IDE/PATA HDD's installed.
..and from that we can extrapolate that three of your seven desktops are slow. :p
I will say, however, that I've had some old IDE drives in a RAID array and they weren't bad. Today's standards are pretty high (especially with SSDs being popular and cheap now), but those old IDE drives don't do too bad.
Posted on Reply
#17
remixedcat
qubitThat piccie of a 160GB drive. So quaint now, lol. I remember getting a "gargantuan" 80GB drive back in the day. :laugh:
dude on my dell dimension L series PC was a rockin a QUANTUM FIREBALL! raid setup with 2 x 40GB drives. I had the the most storage space in the entire grade in school!
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#18
SaltyFish
TIL Western Digital was still making PATA drives well into 2013. I still have a few working PATA drives that I use for storage, even though USB flash drives have caught up. Think I'll have to snatch up a few PATA drives while I still can or look into a SATA to PATA interface for my PS2.

AGP, floppy drives, CRTs, PCI (not Express), and now PATA.... what's left from the 1990s that's due up on the chopping block?
Posted on Reply
#19
The Von Matrices
SaltyFishAGP, floppy drives, CRTs, PCI (not Express), and now PATA.... what's left from the 1990s that's due up on the chopping block?
It would be so nice to finally get rid of the 4-pin Molex power plug in favor of the SATA power plug. I hate the 4-pin Molex power plug with a vengeance because all the pins are free to move around in the connector. Getting all 4 pins to fit into their 4 sockets requires multiple mating attempts and jiggling around the connector, and if you try to force it, you end up pushing one of the pins out of the connector and then your connector is broken.
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#20
Behemot
The Von MatricesIt would be so nice to finally get rid of the 4-pin Molex power plug in favor of the SATA power plug. I hate the 4-pin Molex power plug with a vengeance because all the pins are free to move around in the connector. Getting all 4 pins to fit into their 4 sockets requires multiple mating attempts and jiggling around the connector, and if you try to force it, you end up pushing one of the pins out of the connector and then your connector is broken.
SATA power is PoS. I wonder which moron invented such thing. Molex tends to get bad sometimes (also depends on it's quality), on the other hand you can repair it for like 10c.

And try to get SATA power male! I am dealing with manufacturers ATM, if it will go well, I will be maybe the only person in Europe having standalone male power connector solderable to cable…

Anyway, I wonder why nobody ever made UATA drive bigger than 500 GB. No wonder nobody was buying it for those bloody prices when you could get 1TB drive+PCI controller for it…
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#21
Prima.Vera
The Von MatricesIt would be so nice to finally get rid of the 4-pin Molex power plug in favor of the SATA power plug. I hate the 4-pin Molex power plug with a vengeance because all the pins are free to move around in the connector. Getting all 4 pins to fit into their 4 sockets requires multiple mating attempts and jiggling around the connector, and if you try to force it, you end up pushing one of the pins out of the connector and then your connector is broken.
I still have installed in my station a PCI TV Tuner and also an EIDE (PATA) DVD Writer, all working perfect; so... :D
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#23
Athlonite
SaltyFishAGP, floppy drives, CRTs, PCI (not Express), and now PATA.... what's left from the 1990s that's due up on the chopping block?
shitty USB2.0 I'd rather have half as many USB2.0 ports and twice as many USB3.0 ports thankyou

I'll miss PATA like a hole in the head but I've still got an fully functioning Seagate 545MB PATA HDD that gets booted into windows 95 OSR2 once a year just to make sure it still works I've aslo got older Quantum XL 100MB HDD on a full length 16bit ISA card which still works
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#24
Baum
it's funny that i did "upgrade" some ibm notebooks this year which wheer used for laboratory use, taking measurements finnally filled the harddrive and a new swap from 80GB to 320GB did the trick....

new ide harddrives are still availeble with a little higher price compared to sata..


i wonder why there a such few 750GB IDE drives the 3,5" ones?
Is it possible that the manufacturer now a days just kick out super old stock with these 80GB drives?
I mean even the 320GB one in my case (2,5") was an old stock but still in production from hitachi for industrial storage.
I wouldn't mind getting a 1TB IDE drive for my older USB/IDE Bridge
Posted on Reply
#25
Behemot
BaumI wouldn't mind getting a 1TB IDE drive for my older USB/IDE Bridge
This. There is way too many UATA enclosures which are useless just because the lack of proper-sized UATA drives.
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