Seagate to Drop IDE Drives by Year End

ianare writes "Seagate plans to cease manufacturing IDE hard drives by the end of the year and will focus exclusively on SATA-based products. Seagate is the first major hard drive manufacturer to announce such plans, though others will likely follow suit. That's not to say support for the 21-year-old PATA standard is going to vanish overnight; similar to how ISA slots were available long after most of us had ditched our old ISA peripherals."

Re:Does it really matter?

[CastrTroy]

Exactly. Good riddance. It's not as though these things are in high demand. Sure some company will keep on producing them for people that are into legacy hardware, but I fully expected that the main manufacturers (Seagate, Maxtor, WD, et al) would stop producing these things eventually.

but the motherboards!

[Doppler00]

Poor motherboard manufactures still have to support all the existing legacy devices, even though new devices uses new I/O standards. I always find it amusing to see serial, parallel ports, and floppy connectors on new motherboards. Of course, until DVD drive manufacturers switch to SATA, we'll still see IDE connectors on mothboards. Do the SATA controllers really cost that much more?

Re:but the motherboards!

[EvanED]

Floppy drives are still almost essential if you want to install Windows XP or earlier on a computer with a RAID or other controller card.

It's an unfortunate truth.

Re:Does it really matter?

[Dunbal]

The Amish still use horses and buggies and don't want anything to do with those new-fangled horseless carriages. Your point is? Technology moves ahead. Stay with your system, or upgrade. But no one will stop progress because you complain.

Re:Does it really matter?

[timeOday]

no one will stop progress because you complain.

On the contrary, PATA drives will certainly continue to be made if people continue to buy them.

Re:but the motherboards!

[mmxsaro]

This is true, yes, but you can always slipstream your controller drivers into a Windows XP CD without much trouble (that is, if you have another computer nearby to perform such a task) to completely bypass the use of a floppy.

ISA...

[gringer]

ISA slots were available long after most of us had ditched our old ISA peripherals.

You Insensitive Clod! I still have an ISA modem. Works much better than those silly winmodems, too.

Re:but the motherboards!

[Blkdeath]

The floppy and ps2 ports are unlikely to die any time soon.

I recently purchased a couple new Dell computers for my company and couldn't justify paying extra for a floppy drive or hunting the site for a model with PS/2 ports. Instead I got 6 USB2.0 ports.

ISA ports, serial/paralell ports, PS/2 ports, floppy drives, PATA; it's all old technology. Let it go already. Much like cars gave up on carburetors, houses gave up wood-based heating, etc. so must computers give up the antique technologies we cling to so dearly.

Re:What about osdev?

[cortana]

The ghastly PC partitioning system and the horrible kludges that we have to perform to get our PCs to boot are a weight around our necks. But things have been this way for so long that some of us seem to accept it as the natural order of things and question why we should ever strive for something better.

Re:Serial ports

[Tony Hoyle]

Most routers have serial consoles, and I'm not sure the PPS example is that esoteric.

USB to serial is an extra device, costs money compared to a simple serial cable, and requires drivers (for some reason they still haven't standardised a usb to serial protocol, dammit!). It's a lot of hassle compared to walking up to a router and plugging the laptop into it.

Even more stupid is usb to serial adapters seem to all be cables with fixed plugs on the end, rather than a standard serial port - so you need a different one for each serial standard (I've got 5 here - all incompatible with each other).

Why are so many complaining?

[muffen]

Don't understand why so many people are complaining about this, I doubt it will make any difference to the majority of people complaining.

If you want to connect your old IDE drive to a new computer, just buy a converter [addonics.com], if you can afford the computer, I'm sure you can find the extra $20 somewhere.

If your old IDE drive breaks and you need a new one, get a SATA card [cooldrives.com], it costs less than $30, so if you can afford the new drive, I doubt you will have a problem paying the extra $30.

If you want to add storage space to your existing computer and all your PCI slots are gone or you don't know how to open a computer, get a USB drive. Since you don't have a SATA connection, I doubt speed is your main concern.

Finally, if you don't have USB connections, get something like the NSLU2 [linksys.com], you can even run Linux [nslu2-linux.org] on it (I'm running two of those at home with Debian Etch, works really well).

I'm sure you could come up with some scenario where the IDE drive would be useful and there really isn't any other option, but for the vast majority of people complaining, there are solutions already out there that will solve the problem.

SATA cables...

[RMH101]

...suck balls. Whoever designed the SATA data and power connectors should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves - they're terrible. They don't lock, they're flimsy and they break if a lateral force is applied to the cable. At least IDE's bulletproof.

Re:What about osdev?

[jrminter]

I'm not so happy to see companies like Dell supply systems without connectors for PS/2 mice and keyboards. I've had 'issues' with USB mice and keyboards on more than one system running Linux. What you call 'legacy,' I call an 'old standard that just works.' Kinda like me :)

Re:PS2 keyboards

[GiMP]

Except that the Model:M isn't compatible with all of the PS/2->USB adapters and those adapters, well, quite frankly -- suck.

For instance, with my adapter, when I'm holding shift or ctrl for 5 seconds, it silently "forgets" that I'm holding the key. This is annoying when I'm paging in xterm (shift+page[up/dn]), hunting for a lost session in screen, etc. For games its beyond annoying, as your keyboard casually "forgets" that you're walking forward every 5 seconds.

Sources?????

[russ1337]

The Arstechnica article has this:

The Inquirer (via various channel sources) first reported the move, and a Seagate spokesperson told Ars that the report was "probably" true.

So there seems to be some doubt about the article. When you visit the Ars link to the Inquirer, there are no references whatsoever beyond "Chanel sources". The only other news article I can find links back to the Inquirer.

I think I'd need to see a press release from Seagate before this gets any more of my attention.

No more IDE?

[WoLpH]

So... they're going to sell SCSI only?

When will people learn that SATA is also IDE...

Re:PS2 keyboards

[shaitand]

'removing PS/2 ports will allow for even smaller motherboard form factors as well as a marginal cost reduction in manufacture. Besides Model Ms are available in USB flavor, or you could always use a PS/2 - USB adapter.'

Forget space, there are very practical reasons for keeping keyboards a PS/2 Port. The fact is, if I have a functional keyboard plugged into a PS/2 port it just works, no special settings or configuration, no checking for compatibility or support. It works in simple utilities loaded off boot disks and rescue modes and recovery systems. It works to turn on usb keyboard support in the bios. It works to install operating systems. It just works.

As a technician in the field I encounter problems and frustrations with USB keyboards regularly. Microsoft knows this. If you purchase a wireless keyboard from them the mouse plugs into the usb port an the keyboard has a PS/2 connector (not that mice don't have the same issues but you can usually use the keyboard to do what you need). I praise the FSM that most usb keyboards come with an adapter to plug into a PS/2 port. Again, it isn't as if you see many boards these days that don't have usb ports, its because the manufacturers are all too aware of the problems I'm referring to.

'PATA is long overdue to be obsoleted, even optical drives are starting to come in SATA interface configurations.'

STARTING to come in SATA configurations is NOT long due to be obsoleted. I want my technology obsoleted when actually being functionally irrelevant makes it obsolete and removing support for it to be a simple recognition of that fact.

I really don't care that much about Seagate not manufacturing new drives in SATA because I'm not going to buy new drives with an old interface when the new interface is SLIGHTLY faster. What pisses me off is the motherboards that are being shipped with one IDE connection that can't be used for booting and that will for me to buy several hundred dollars worth of new drives that currently don't perform much better than the ones I've got.

'Next to go should be PCI slots.'

Same problem as IDE. You do realize some of us have expansion cards other than video cards right? Most cards on the market are PCI.