What to do with old PATA drives?

[kaiblu]

Hi,

I've been using the same desktop since early 2004 (with new laptops in between), but I think it might be time to upgrade. The problem is that I have a lot of Parallel ATA drives. What should I do:

1. Find a motherboard that supports PATA
2. Buy a new SATA HDD and copy everything to it
3. Buy external enclosures and house the old drives in it
4. Keep old PC as server (not sure I need this though)
5. Other?

[willy]

I am doing #3 & #4 ...

#5 ... I sold/gave away a couple to my friends with older systems ...

[7jaii]

I recommend #2 & #4 - If you're building a new system you want access to your old data immediately. Backing it up to SATA means you just plug into new mobo and go. I also promote re-using systems because even an old PII system is useful. Since your PATA HDDs are probably out of warranty you can convert your PC to a PVR or P2P unit. Add a $35 TV Tuner card and you can watch shows in digital.

#5 - Is very good if you have time on your hands. Remember that old rigs don't bring in money so it's better if you give them away FREE. Selling for $30 but having to answer their phone call every time something doesn't work...that's crazy. Just clean it up and donate it to someone who needs a desktop.

#3 - Can I promote that I sell enclosures and recover data? Ha ha, there's a lot of life left in your PC. Don't let the fact that it struggles to decode H.264 deter you from keeping it. Enclosures are fantastic if you're operating 2 or more machines and want to convenience of swapping files or sharing AVI/MP3 with friends.

[attonbitusira]

I was in the same situation in 2006. I upgraded to a small SATA disk, installed windows, but kept my old data on PATA. Then when I bought my 500GB SATA drive I copied everything over to it from the old drives, bought an external enclosure, and currently back up .iso images on the PATA drives.

[Oversized Rooster]

My rules are:

As soon as a hard drive is within 6 months of being out of warranty, sell it.

If a drive is past its warranty, sell it or chuck it.

Especially for PATA drives, the garbage bin seems like a good place.

[rabbit]

Get an SATA drive.

Depending on the size of your IDE drives, get one of these ITE or Silicon Image PCI IDE controller cards $15/17.
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4646
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4650
Don't know which is better. SiI makes good controllers for SATA, but I don't know about IDE.

Or you can get some IDE/SATA combo card, or one of the various VIA cards that have 100 different things all-in-one :).

[mysticalinfluence]

I would to say sell it. The IDE ports are slowly leave are motherboards and its dated. I would say time to upgrade to SATA.

[willy]

I would to say sell it. The IDE ports are slowly leave are motherboards and its dated. I would say time to upgrade to SATA.
I would say IDE will still be with us for quite a while ... Even high(er)-end X58 mobos still have them .... http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7586758&postcount=138

[M-e-X-x]

keep the pata's... can't have too much storage imo... enclosure it!

[Digital_Domain]

If you're in the GTA and you've got some small drives hit me up with a PM. Quiet is key for me but lemme know.

[rilles]

I bought external USB enclosures for PATAs.

[kaiblu]

I know in my new PC I'll use SATA for sure. Drives are cheap nowadays ($150 for 1.5TB or so here in the states). It's just finding time to copy everything over that is bugging me. Plus I have to learn to use Vista and worry about my old software not working. I don't know about moving them to a new PC because won't that require quite a large tower?

At the same time, I'm not sure I'll be using the old PC once the new one's here. I don't have room for it, and I'll be using my 22" LCD with the new PC. Don't get me started on having to learn new jargon and figuring out which parts are best for the money. Graphics cards have sped up hundredfold since 2004.

PS - I probably have about 1.5TB in PATA drives. 600GB or so of them are in externals already.

PPS - Are built-in graphics chips good enough for games nowadays (i.e. better than my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro)?

[Amourek]

Sell 'em. No point investing money so you can use out-dated technology. New SATA drives are cheap and plenty of people still need IDE drives.

[gordholio]

Sell 'em. No point investing money so you can use out-dated technology. New SATA drives are cheap and plenty of people still need IDE drives.

An IDE drive still works; doesn't matter if it is supposedly outdated. It's really not -will do just as good a job as a SATA drive for storage.

[rabbit]

> I don't know about moving them to a new PC because won't that require quite a large tower?

Towers usually have at least four 3.5" internal bays.



> Sell 'em. No point investing money so you can use out-dated technology.

On the other hand, I don't think selling them is worth the money you get in return.



> An IDE drive still works; doesn't matter if it is supposedly outdated. It's really not -will do just as good a job as a SATA drive for storage.

Yep. I use mine for torrents. Better to crap out the old drives with all the read/writes than a new one :).

[Topher]

http://www.ian.org/HD-Clock/