IDE Hard Disks?

[ffutures]

I need a bigger IDE hard disk in my main PC - it's getting too full even after deleting a lot of crap.

SVP and Play don't seem to have any in stock, presumably because SATA is taking over, but there seem to be a lot of allegedly new ones on eBay, including a fair number of 400gb "Ultra ATA" Seagate barracudas around the £35 + P&P mark. Usually Seagate seem to be pretty good, anyone know any reason why these should be avoided?

Comments

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The killer problem with Seagate Barracudas (a firmware hiccup) has gone away, as far as I know. What you need to know about buying one is whether it is an OEM device in which case Seagate do not warranty it. If you're going to buy one on Ebay (I assume this is a Buy It Now deal) then you should be able to get the serial number of the drive from the seller. This can be punched into the Seagate website and checked for warranty status.

I presume if there's a lot of a particular drive on Ebay then a tranche came from system pulls or similar. On the other hand we could come to a deal and you could buy the 750gig low-mileage ATA drive I'm selling. If you're interested email me.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

YHM

[saranjeuhal.livejournal.com]

UATA is deprecated now, because most machines are being built around SATA. These are probably overstock from a manufacturer being sold through another wholesaler to cut losses.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

Roughly what I was going to say.

I just installed a SATA expansion card in a server which had no SATA on the MB because I knew that I wouldnt be able to buy big IDE drives...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure this PC will boot from an expansion card, and the other three IDE drives in it might be a problem.

[sirernest.livejournal.com]

Personally I would recommend Eclipse Computer in Coventry (http://www.eclipsecomputers.com/productlist.aspx?type=2&id=14) but only because I've had only the best experiences with them and would trust them slightly more with a HDD than eBay. But that's just me.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I think I may be sorted.