Hard drive spec change

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Felix Miata <mrmazda at earthlink.net> said:
> Not even. Just don't use new technology as excuse to accelerate abandonment
> of old hardware. New stuff does not instantly convert old stuff into bad
> stuff. We don't force old BMWs into salvage yards just because new ones use
> different sized tires. Tire manufacturers don't need to throw away the molds
> for the old tire sizes, just as HD manufacturers don't need to throw away all
> tooling for PATA HD interfaces. Old machines work fine with new tires/HDs,
> regardless how much better newer machines with more evolved tires/HDs (might)
> work.

A car analogy isn't exactly appropriate here; car lifetime is probably
an order of magnitude longer than the typical hard drive.  Also, tires
are a consumable, while for a large percentage of computer users, hard
drives are not (they are inside the magic box somebody got at Wal-Mart).

In any case, I don't know what your problem is.  I went to newegg.com
and still see over a dozen PATA drives listed, in sizes from 80G to
500G.

If you really need more PATA drives and want a wider selection, buy a
SATA-PATA adapter and use a SATA drive.

Hard drive manufacturers operate on razor-thin margins and can only make
a certain number of drives.  If the vast majority of new drives bought
are SATA, they are going to stop making PATA drives (or at least raise
the prices significantly).  They are not in business to cater to the
small (and rapidly shrinking) market.

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.