IDE laptop drives at a reasonable price?

As the subject says, does anyone know where I can get at least one or two,
maybe up to three new, or at least *modern* IDE laptop drives at a price
that won't prevent me from eating for months?

My hobby is playing with older ThinkPads these days. If I watch Tradme
dilligently enough I can, now and then, get a bargain that will keep my busy
and happy for quite a while. I'm not really buying to on-sell as I simply
don't have the capital to buy in that 'sector' of laptops. Most of mine are
as slow as a single-core Atom, if not slower. (Not taking the fatser memory
bus in the Atom-equipped netbooks.)

However they'd sure benefit from a faster HDD. Quite a few of them have 20,
30 or 40GB 4,200rpm drives and I know from experience that putting a newer
5,400rpm drive makes them *way* more usable. Alas! From what I can see a new
80GB IDE drive is around the same price as a 500GB SATA HDD, if not dearer!

LOL, now that the laptops are affordable for me to 'play' with the HDDs to
upgrade them a bit aren't. :-(

I've looked at all of my bookmarked NZ computer dealers and it doesn't look
good. This post is almost a last resort really. I *know* that a PIII /
1.2GHz equipped laptop can be quite snappy but, with a 4,200rpm HDD startup
and load times are just abysmal. Even though this is mostly a hobby for me
I'd like to be able to use these things from time-to-time as well as just
refurbish them.

TIA for any help.
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

Thanks Tony, it's been a long time since I looked at Grays, I'll give it
another go.

All the best for the long weekend.
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

I just recently had the original IBM drive finally fail in my T23.
I bit the bullet and bought a new 5400 rpm drive from Ascent.
My choice of Ascent was based purely on being my "preferred supplier".
Older tech can be a lot dearer due to the dynamics of supply & demand.

Anyway, I can tell you that the new 5400 RPM drive performs far better
that the original IBM 4200 RPM drive. Boot time is nearly halved and
transfer speed is more than doubled (still not getting to 100MB/s).

 

So you and misfit agree on this point, like power freaks of internal
combustion engines. More revs is alaways better for power. The limits gather
quickly though after a certain point

 

An added bonus to the larger capacity (10x, in fact) is having more
data passing under the heads at each cylinder, without requiring
physical movement to the next cylinder. Plus larger cache buffer and
higher UDMA mode support all help to improve things.

 

Yes, so very true. It's just a shame that an interface that was mainstream
just five years ago is now considered "older tech". I'm all for newer /
faster / better but I wish "they" wouldn't /obsolete/ the previous tech so
damn quickly! I mean, sheeee-it, I've got a couple machines here that use
IDE HDDs that are more than adequate (and faster than new netbooks) but, as
you say, the dynamics of supply & demand mean that I'm paying ~10x the price
per GB for storage

Ok, I know how 'the commercial model' works and all that but surely we can't
really be shitting on our planet to the extent that, for the lack of a
faster HDD and some more RAM, perfectly capable computers are being turned
into landfill?

I have an IBM ThinkPad X31 here that is actually a *very* capable machine.
All that it lacks is more storage space (larger HDD) and a bit more RAM.
Leaving the RAM issue aside for now as the difference between SDRAM and DDR3
RAM is huge... The difference between IDE HDDs and a SATA HDD is basically a
few chips and the connector. They have probably 90%+ parts in common...

Why then are IDE drives nearly 10x the price per GB when the CPUs in these ~
8 - 10 year old machines are just as powerful, if not more so as the Atom
CPUs in netbooks? It's really pissing me off.

Oh, I don't doubt it. Sometime last year Seagate Momentus laptop drives
vanished from the NZ market and they had some sweet 7,200rpm drives in the
line-up. However even the WD 5,400rpm drives are fast (lightning fast
compared with 10 y/o 4,200rpm drives) and actually use less power with the
fluid dynamic bearings and large on-board caches.

The last two laptop IDE drives I bought were WD 80GB (as money's tight and
times are hard). They are single-platter high aureal density and actually
use significantly less power than the older 4,200rpm drives I've replaced. I
just think that it's criminal that they cost about the same as a SATA 500GB
7,200rpm HDD. The difference that said HDD swap makes to an ~8 y/o laptop is
huge. You've got to wonder what one of the now-unattainable Seagate 7,200rpm
drives would have made! (Not getting into the whole SSD thing here...)

Is it a conspiracy? Are "they" making it too expensive to upgrade an
otherwise perfectly good laptop in the hope that we'll go out and buy a
12-month warranty thin plastic, refective screen (but oh so trendy) netbook
instead of a rock-solid time-tested machine that will run rings around the
Atom...

ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!! Sorry, just getting annoyed that these beautifully made and
still very useful machines are being pushed out by plastic shite. For what
it costs me to put a decent size IDE HDD and to max out the RAM into an X30
/ X31 I'm half-way to the cost of a new nutbook. Sorry, *net*book. The
keyboard on an X31 is such a pleasure to use and the whole machine just
oozes class, far more class than a EEEeeeeeeeee could dream of attaining....

Ok, rant over. Still, the question remains, where can I get new (or nearly
so) laptop IDE HDDs? Perhaps the 'economic model' is different in another
country and ordering from overseas is an option??

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

Or like some other group who agree on an obvious point, without the implied
put-down? Faster HDDs don't use more power but they produce hugely better
results.

Power? nz.comp remember.....

Okay, I hope you enjoyed your easter saturday.
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

Exactly so. All without putting more power into the drive. Better bearings
and improved electronics give essentially *free* improvements. It would be
wonderful if IDE HDDs didn't cost essentially 10x what SATA HDDs cost on a
GB / GB basis.
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

I have one of those for one of my ThinkPads. They utilise a 'lowest bidder'
bridge-chip to convert SATA signals to PATA and tend to be rather
inefficient. However they *do* allow the use of much larger HDDs.

That said the ThinkPads that I've been 'playing wth' recently (X3x range)
are 'ultraportables' and don't have an optical drive to swap for a SATA
drive. That said though they're brilliant little machines.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

Hi Shaun

Wish you the best of luck.

I did a pile of T,R & X series Thinkpads last year with locked
motherboards for a colleague. They were 'very' cheap but my colleague
despite having much better industry contacts than I, hasn't been able to
source cheap hard drives in the six months since I did the job.

Best
Paul.

 

There is a lot of engineering technology in a hard drive that would set
a certain level of "base-line" cost, regardless of speed and capacity.
Also, hard drive manufacturing competition is now at an all-time low
after the recent acquisition of Samsung's HDD division by Seagate.
Now there are only two main suppliers of HDDs: Seagate and Western Digital.

 

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Murray Symon wrote:
[snip]

Agreed. However that doesn't explain why a single-platter / two head 80GB
5,400rpm IDE drive costs $92 and for a similar price I can get a 320GB
7,200rpm SATA drive that uses two platters / three heads.

I know, I know. Supply and demand and higher volume of units made means
lower over-all price. However the difference is huge and there are still a
lot of folks using laptops with IDE drives. :-/

If you want an excercise in futility try to find a fast SLC SSD in IDE
format. Some of the later machines that were equipped with an IDE interface
are still extremely capable and in fact run Windows 7 perfectly. These
laptops would benefit from the extra speed of an SSD most yet you can't get
one. The best you can do is try to cobble together an IDE - CF adapter and
find a fast SLC CF card....

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

Thanks Paul.

As I feared then. :-( It's so dissapointing to refurbish an older ThinkPad,
or even re-build using parts from various sources only to have it I/O bound
due to running an ~8 y/o 4,200rpm HDD when everything else's been sorted. I
know that dropping a 5,400rpm drive into it would make it much more usable,
not to mention a 7,200rpm drive. However I haven't seen a 7,200rpm IDE HDD
for sale (new) in NZ in the ~four years I've been working on ThinkPads.

I do this as a hobby more than anything. Although I've sold a couple of
ThinkPads I'm certainly not making money out of them that's for sure. It
keeps me occupied and out of the crack houses (<g>) as, now and then, if I
search Trademe dilligently I can find something that will keep me busy for
quite a while at a price I can swing. (If I knew how to unlock them I could
likely do even better! ;-) I see the odd one go *very* cheap as it's
locked.) I enjoy working with ThinkPads and learning about them, they're so
well-made and there is plenty of documentation available to help with
dis/assembly.

LOL. I'm getting quite a collection now. I've had folks who know how broke I
am ask why I don't sell (more of) them. They don't seem to understand that,
for the small amount of money I'd get for them compared with the time I've
put into them, plus money for RAM etcetera and the pleasure I get from them,
selling them isn't really an option. Most are what the average l/user would
consider obsolete and therefore I'd not get much for them. I value them much
more highly than the average mook on Trademe.

I hope you're well and healthy mate, best to you and yours.
--
Shaun.

P.S. I don't suppose your mate has a spare working lid, (or just screen and
inverter) for an X31? I have an excellent specimen that lacks both. The CFL
is had it and so's the inverter.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

I can think of three interconnected reasons:

1. Massive difference in economies of scale. SATA drives have been the
standard for laptops for about five years, longer for desktops. The
number of new computers (especially laptops) being sold has been growing
most years, so more and more SATA drives are being sold for new
computers, and for aftermarket sales for recent laptops, and for
external portable hard drives. Older laptops are more likely to wear out
than new ones, so the number of sales of IDE drives as replacements for
old laptops will be shrinking each year.

2. Because of reduced sales, hard drive manufacters stopped doing major
technology development on IDE drives, and most manufacturers stopped
development and/or manufacture completely. SATA drives have continued to
advance, resulting in performance and capacity improvements for SATA
drives while IDE drives are left behind. In effect, the IDE drives are a
design which is several years old.

3. I expect that reduced competition due to fewer manufacturers has
resulted in lack of price pressure on IDE drives, while it is still a
factor for SATA drives.

 

Yep, that's what I tried to say in the paragraph below.

Actually there's nothing left to 'develop'. The interface is what it is and
doesn't need to change while the platters don't care if they're in a SATA or
an IDE drive so development in increased aureal density *could* be very
easilly used to benefit IDE drives. Yet it isn't being used, they've
essentially frozen the capacities at what they were when IDE ceased to be
used in new machines. Odd.

But... How does that work? There are the same number of manufacturers for
both SATA *and* IDE? The two types of drives have probably 80% of components
in common.... <still scratching head over the above>
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

The interface between the controller board and the drive electronics
could be changing over the years in some way (I have no idea), and at a
minimum the cache and other architecture on the controllers would have
been developed further with SATA than with IDE. Whatever the reason, the
manufacturers aren't interesting in selling drives with new mechanisms
and old controllers.

Seagate announced several years ago that they weren't making IDE drives
any more, and they stopped being available once remaining stocks were
exhausted.

As far as I can see from what is available new in New Zealand, everyone
apart from Western Digital followed suit, but I haven't checked overseas
sources to confirm whether that is just NZ-specific. Somewhat of a moot
point now that Seagate and WD have bought out all the other
manufacturers.

 

The reason isn't that it can't be done easily and cheaply. 'Bridge chips'
are common (see: http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?pid=79 ).
Ok, that one goes the other way but it has an "on-board
serializer/deserializer" and is about the size of my little finger nail.

Ok, it might not handle 'Advanced Format' drives but WD and Seagate both
make 'normal', 512 bytes-per-sector HDDs with capacities up to 500GB and
spindle-speeds of 7,200rpm in their SATA flavours.

Ok, that's one announcement that I missed.

I just had a look at Newegg, TigerDirect and a few others and it seems that
in the US there are WD and a few odd-balls like Apricorn, CMS Products and
Panasonic as well as what I guess is old stock, a few Toshibas and Samsungs.

Not only that but there is just the one line of WD, 'Scorpio Blue', with
just five models ranging from 80GB to 320GB (80, 120, 160, 250 and 320. It
seems that the 120GB version isn't available in NZ). They are all 5,400rpm
and have 8MB of cache. I really didn't think that IDE laptop drives would
come to this so fast. No more fast 7,200rpm drives, nothing bigger than
320GB.....

Is it just me or did that happen indecently quickly? After all it was only
five years ago that SATA drives were quite new and a lot of laptops for sale
were still fitted with IDE drives.

True. I don't have a good feeling about this having happened either. Too
easy to 'price-fix' and in this economy, where are we if one of them goes
under? The whole computer industry at the mercy of a single HDD supplier?
Scary thought.
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

Somewhere on teh intarwebs ~misfit~ wrote:
[snip]

Damn! Replying to myself now! Senility sucks.

I meant to mention that the only hope for people such as myself who want to
keep older hardware, not only running but running as well as it can might be
to wait (and wait and wait). One day mSATA SSDs[*] should be affordable and
someone's bound to make an IDE adapter. Right? Right? Awwww, c'mon!

[*]
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4078/intels-ssd-310-g2-performance-in-an-msata-form-factor
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

Not really, the important thing to look at now is how many companies
are manufacturing Solid State disks, and thankfully there are quite a
few.
The mechanical hard disk has entered its (gradual?) slide towards
being a intriguing antiquity for the next generation.

How long do you think it'll be before a 1TB usb3 (or 4?) flash drive
costs the same as a 5 pack of blank bluray discs does now? i give it 4
years.

 

True. However 90% of them are using sandforce controllers. ;-)

One industry analyst who's column I read seemed to think that they'd be
around for at least another decade, probably two or three. He reckons that
SLC NAND will never be cheap enough to compete with mechanical storage and
that MLC NAND will always be second-rate. <shrug> He was of the opinion that
hybrid disks will become more common. Like Seagate's XT only with more NAND
and having essentially two 'partitions'. One being the fast (but still
expensive) SLC NAND, for OS and programmes which benefit most from fast
access times and the other, much larger partition being mechanical for data
storage (and to hold a backup of the NAND).

I don't know how much a 5-pack of blu-ray discs cost.... However I do think
that you're being optimistic. Hey, hopefully not.
--
Shaun.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche