where to buy new pata hdd?

[Jrecee]

Have an old computer with no hdd. Still have the unopened xp install disk. Bought an HDD today not realizing it doesn't take sata. Does anyone know of a credible place to buy a NEW pata hdd? Two places I've found, one on amazon and another on ebay, both have bad reviews for claiming they're new but aren't.

[Cronozilla]

NewEgg has some available. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... DE%20Ultra Though, most are from external sellers (not sure about NewEgg's quality policy there). They do have some themselves, but they're refurbished and open box. Very cheap, though, and they likely work fine.

The problem is PATA connection was never called PATA until after SATA was out and about and there had to be a distinction between parallel and serial data transfer. It was most often referred to as IDE.

You'll want to see which speed IDE the board supports, but Ultra ATA 100 and 133 drives are still readily available.

New IDE drives cost a lot more, they're very outdated.

Another option would be to get a PCI expansion card that allows you to use SATA, though that will be slower than an IDE drive. This would cost more than just finding one, though.

You can also look around for second hand stuff. It'll be readily available and cheap and if it still works now it's probably fine.

[TSTR]

I have 2 used ones if you're interested.

[Jrecee]

Yeah, the 3rd party seller with most of them, goharddrive, is the one I saw on ebay that was selling used drives as new.

The refurbished newegg ones also have this review:


"The "refurbished" is also misleading, at best. Refurbished usually applies to equipment that has been returned for some reason, and that it is checked and repaired as necessary to bring it up to spec.

These drives are pulls from old systems. The SMART stat for hours in service is a 7 for one of them and a 1 for the other (that's deprecated down from 100 at full health ~0 hours service to threshold of 1, which is total service hours equal to MEan Time Between FAILure, MBT) .. meaning they were powered on since 2005 more or less continuously, then pulled from systems because they are a heartbeat away from the last few hours of their life expectancy.

Also, of the two purchased, one was received with corrosion visible on various parts and pins and a layer of extremely fine dust adhering to every surface -- including the circuit board -- that had to be carefully damp-wiped and brushed off. It was semi-glued on as if it had been in a chain-smokers office for ten years and saturated with tobacco tar and smoke particles."

[Ziggy]

Another option is to get an adapter that'll let you use the SATA drive on the PATA header. They're hard to search for because results will turn up mostly adapters of the opposite purpose (using PATA drives on a SATA header). But they do exist. In fact, aren't people using them these days to use SATA drives in a PS2? I got one years ago, and it works great. It even has a master/slave jumper.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

This is your best option in my opinion as you already bought a SATA drive. You'll get PATA speeds, which is all you were going to get with a PATA drive anyway. It'll be better than getting a SATA PCI card.

[Jrecee]

I did briefly look into that option, but my concern is that I want to dual boot Windows 98 on this machine at some point, and apparently it has issues with sata. While I'm here, are there any other issues with windows 98 that I should be aware of? It just seemed like a good option to run old dos games as long as I'm piecing this old computer back together.

[Cronozilla]

Well, I would take TSTR up on his offer. He's a reputable dude.

[TSTR]

Yeah, except I forgot darsparx already bought my 250GB one. All I have is a tiny 40GB atm. Thanks for the rep though, Crono!

Fragems has a bunch of old PC stuff, doesn't he?