Seagate announced the end of life for parallel ATA, also known as EIDE, drives early next year.

Claiming that demand is drying up for the drives, the company will end the run of the 15-year-old technology. Also stated is the claim of higher performance with SATA 150 and SATA 300 drives, though much of this performance is, at this point, theoretical.

What is incontrovertible is the ease of wiring with SATA connections. That ease also allows more efficient cooling in many cases. Also, the major manufacturers are releasing the largest capacity drives only in SATA interface.

What is not covered in the announcement is the real reason for the lower consumption of the drives. Motherboard manufacturers are removing the standard second PATA interface on the motherboard, and thereby forcing use of SATA drives. It’s a case of readying the system for better performance, much as DDR2 was not a real performance increase at first, the real increases coming well after introduction.

Parallel ATA drives will continue to be available through retail channels for quite a while after the stop, until supplies are exhausted. Also, no word yet from drive manufacturers Western Digital, Hitachi, and Samsung concerning the fate of EIDE from their production lines.

[tags] Seagate, Maxtor, EIDE, PATA, ATA-133, Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi [/tags]