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I have to replace a dead hard drive in a friends computer. It's a pretty old machine with a parallel ATA100 interface on the motherboard. Will currently available PATA drives be compatible?

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3 Answers

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Yes, any Pata drive will be compatible. There could be a bios limitation of 128-137gb though.

If the bios does not have 48bit Large Block Addressing support, you should stick with a 120gb or smaller drive.

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Thats great thanks. I'll look for a <=120GB then. They seem pretty pricey compared to their SATA equivalents on the usual retailers. I guess I'll try ebay. – UpTheCreek Jan 13 '11 at 20:38
Yes price has gone up for the old Pata drives, soon to be extinct. – Moab Jan 13 '11 at 22:57
Microcenter has good prices...microcenter.com/search/…; – Moab Jan 13 '11 at 22:59
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You could also get a PCI sata controller board and get a smaller SATA drive if the prices worked out as worth it. Even get a SSD for the previous posters size limitations

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How about a SATA to PATA adaptor which lets you fit SATA drives to PATA interfaces (and vice versa) - well less than £10 on Ebay etc.

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I did this in an old Athlon XP, and it works fine. – Marco van de Voort Feb 24 '12 at 15:36

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