IDE hard drives

[Glen Miyashiro]

I have an external USB 3.5" hard drive enclosure that I want to fill with a big drive... but the real whoppers all seem to be using SATA cables these days, and my enclosure uses the old style IDE cables. What's the biggest capacity 3.5" hard drive you can get that still uses an IDE interface?

[helen]

Western Digitial seems to be selling 160 Gbytes IDE drives for under $70 last week or two. According to the CompUSA web site, Seagate is selling a 750 Gbyte disk drive under $300.

[ChicagoGuy75]

I not going to say that I know that much about USB-IDE harddrives. But just want to give food for thought.

160GB harddrive is huge. I would be careful with USB externals in case something happens you might need to back up some of the information once in a while if it's really vital and important information.

I can't imagine burning data DVD's for 160 GB. Even at 4GB per disk, well I think you can get at what I am saying.

Also keep in mind the transfer rate of USB (1.1 or 2.0) is usually explained in BITS not BYTES.

[Glen Miyashiro]

Helen -- yeah, the Seagate Barracuda 750GB seems to be the biggest IDE drive on the market. And it's not just under $300, it's often under $250. Woo hoo!

ChicagoGuy75 -- ummm. I honestly don't follow you.

[ChicagoGuy75]

All I am saying is please keep in mind that having a big harddrive means backing up more information.

I have read on some Tech sites that the seek/transfer rates aren't quite as good as a direct connected harddrive in the computer and sometimes stops after 1GB of constant transferring to an USB harddrive.

[helen]

There are more than one way to do a backup of a disk drive. The easiest for Glen is to buy another 750 Gbyte drive and another external case (or just buy an external drive). Backup the stuff that is located on the 1st 750 Gbyte drive to the second 750 Gbyte drive.

[ChicagoGuy75]

Only if needed that is (for backing up a HD).

I had a 40GB HD crash and lost alot of information. Thankfully it wasn't important information, just alot of junk (I didn't even get past 30GB). But now with itunes, I back up any new songs once I get a full data CD's worth.

750 GB thou, wow that is huge. I remember the days of taking a hole puncher to a C64 disk just to get a double sided floppy disk for extra storage. LOL.

[craigwatanabe]

I remember when personal computers had no hard drives at all and 1Mb of RAM ran about $100.

My first computer that came WITH a hard drive was a 286SX (25mhz clock speed) with a whopping 8Mb hard drive. You could store a gazillion floppies on that mother.

[Glen Miyashiro]

750GB does seem like a lot.. until you realize that standard-quality video rips typically take about 700MB per two-hour movie, or 350MB per one-hour TV episode. Lost runs about 10GB per season all by itself.

If I were to rip my entire music and video library and convert everything to standard-quality MP3 and AVI files, I'd probably need two or three times as much storage as that. But it might be worth it, so that I could take down all those shelves and free up that wall space...

Plus, there's all the still photos and video footage that I shoot myself. Every week I probably add another couple GB of stuff to the pile. And then there's my ongoing push to scan all my important paperwork so I can find it easier.

Yikes, I think I may need a full terabyte by next year.

[ChicagoGuy75]

If you were to do all that, then seriously, you'll need to back up that harddrive frequent with possible DVD back up copies so your personal files won't get corrupted.

[Hellbent]

I bought a 5000R Mvix HD case for about $200 w/shipping (does not include hd). Its a External HD case with TV and Sound out. Its got RCA, Composite, optical, svideo, and USB connectors. It plays back any kind of video with any codec, subtitled movies, vobs, mp3's, photos. It can even be used in a car (with optional car kit)
Its awesome! I wish I bought the 750 tho, a network drive would be easier then moving it around for usb transfers and tv out.
I slapped a 250gb and its still got tons of room!

[craigwatanabe]

I think I'll stick to smaller capacity hard drives and bank them. 1-terabyte on a single spindle driven by a single motor just spells doom when something crashes. I cannot imagine defragging 1-Trillion Bytes of data without going off to see a movie...on the West Coast and coming back in time to see the defrag complete itself.

Plus I wouldn't put all my back up data on a single hard drive of that proportion. That's too much data at risk from one drive.

[Glen Miyashiro]

Time to say farewell to the IDE, a.k.a. Parallel ATA, interface. Now what am I going to do with all my old IDE hardware?

Due to the waning popularity of Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (PATA) technology in favor of the newer and speedier Serial ATA-based disk drives, Seagate LLC has acknowledged plans to stop building the older products. According to a spokesman from Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Seagate, the company plans to continue to offer PATA drives, often referred to as integrated device electronics (IDE) drives, until late this year or early next year. (Computerworld)

[helen]

So far it's only one company that has announced that they will stop making the IDE drives.

Your old stuff will still work, it's just that you can't buy new disk drives from Seagate to replace your IDE drives. You can always try:

1) Buy used IDE drives
2) Buy SATA controllers to support the newer drives

[GeckoGeek]

Now what am I going to do with all my old IDE hardware?

Put it next to your ESDI drives?

[NoCal Boy]

I've just found myself in the market for a new IDE drive. My Tivo seems to have died and I need to replace the IDE drive within. I don't need a *huge* drive, like the 750 gig one mentioned earlier (already watch waaaay to much tv and that would be too tempting to fill!) and I think 160 sounds like more than plenty. Anybody know if Costco is still selling IDE drives? I know I can get them cheapest online, but I kinda like the security of Costco's return policy in case something goes wrong with the Tivo format.

On that note, anybody ever replace a Tivo hard drive? Tips/tricks? I know this question should be in a Tivo thread, but while I'm here....

[helen]

I didn't look that hard but the drives at the Iwilei Costco were external drives, they didn't seem to display internal disk drives.

[mp3jockey]

Hey, NoCAL Boy:
Check out www.weaknees.com
Plenty of info there on upgrading your TIVO, as well as drives available...

jock

[NoCal Boy]

Hey, NoCAL Boy:
Check out www.weaknees.com
Plenty of info there on upgrading your TIVO, as well as drives available...

jock

Thanks Jock. Yeah, I already hit their site for directions on upgrading. Sounds straightforward enough to do myself that I can't justify buying one of their drives at twice the cost of the drive itself. Was looking for some real-world Tivo upgrade stories.

[GeckoGeek]

If you're looking locally, I think Personal Touch computers would be worth a call. They tend to have those smaller drives that others don't carry.

[NoCal Boy]

Took a long lunch yesterday and surveyed all the Big Box retailers in the area: Circuit City, Office Depot, Staples, Best Buy, Comp USA, and Costco. (Fortunately all within a five mile radius). Most carried only one brand of internal IDE drives, if any at all (external drives are a hot consumer item - huge selection now!). Size was generally 160 or 320 Gig.

I bought what I thought was the winner at Staples, a 320 Gig Maxtor on sale for $80. More capacity than I need, but cheaper than the 160's so kinda couldn't pass it up at that price. Then I went back to the office and did a search online, to find that CC had a 160 Gig Seagate for $40 after rebate, available for in-store pick up.

Now when I went by there earlier I know that drive wasn't on the shelf, and I was further intrigued with CC's "24 minute, $24 Gift Card" guarantee. If it's not waiting for you 24 minutes after you receive the confirmation email they'll give you a $24 gift card. Figured it was worth a shot, knowing the customer service is slow, and I'd get a cheap drive in any event.

So I ordered, arrived 24 minutes later, and watched as first the stock guy, then a salesman, then a manager all ran around looking for it for 20 minutes. All came up with the same conclusion - it wasn't there. Before I could decide what to do with my gift card, the manager came up to me, offered me a WD 250 Gig drive for $50 instead. I figured, $10 more, bigger, and no rebate hassle. Sold!

[mp3jockey]

Check for real world upgrade tales at

http://www.tivocommunity.com/

The Seagate SV series 500 GB drive has been used with great success in TIVO upgrades. The drive is designed for AV applications running 24/7..

jock

[helen]

I found out last week at work that for older computers that use the ATA/66 interface the most they can handle is around 137 Gbytes. So if you place a 160 Gbyte (or more, in my case it was a 300 Gbyte) disk drive to a motherboard that only handles the ATA/66 interface, the drive will work but you will see only 137 Gbytes (or less depending on the overhead used to store directory information).

To get around this problem I got an ATA/133 PCI controller board from CompUSA. While I was able to use the entire 300 Gbytes I don't know if I am able to boot off that drive. Never tried it since the system had another 120 Gbyte disk drive to run Windows from.

[GeckoGeek]

I found out last week at work that for older computers that use the ATA/66 interface the most they can handle is around 137 Gbytes.

Many drives come with free software that can be loaded to help break size barriers. However, that makes the drive non-standard and can come back and haunt you when you try to move the drive to another machine.

However some might argue against spending money on a machine that old.

[mp3jockey]

decided to peek in on this thread, since Costco has, for the second holiday season in a row, offered some external Seagate hard drives-8TB, quite cheap ( if you still use spinning rust). Picked up two 8GB externals. Perfect for archiving my Blu Ray collection on, then backing up one drive to the other. All files were archived perfectly, and play as if they were using a Blu Ray player to play them back using VLC Media Player. If you're interested in the full instructions, I can reply with the link. This instructions of course only apply to media you fully own and wish to archive for your own use....blah...blah...blah....
Jock.