One of my regular purchases is hard drives. I have huge data bases which I save, just in case I ever need them again. I also have a back-up system where I use a hard drive in an external housing. This housing has served me well but it only takes IDE drives. And Christopher Null has reported that the IDE hard drives are going to be phased out of production:

“…Those are IDE (also known as Parallel ATA or PATA, or just ATA) connectors, part of a technology that has endured for 20 years. And now, with the great success of Serial ATA (SATA) technology becoming apparent, old IDE is about to reach the end of the line: Seagate has become the first hard drive company to announce it will stop making IDE drives by the end of the year. Most of the other IDE makers will likely follow suit in 2008-09.”

link: The End of the Line for IDE Hard Drives

It looks as though I may be buying another external hard drive case in the next year or two.

Catherine Forsythe

[tags]hard drives, ide, seagate, production, backup[/tags]