Skinny hard drives

[Bob Smith]

Has anyone come across any skinny 3.5" drives?

I have a slimline case with a slimline IDE HDD in that I want to replace. I
have seen the Diamondmax and the Seagate ones up to 250gig both at
around 20mm. I also saw a 250 gig Diamondmax at 20.99mm, but am not sure if
I will have to bend metal to fit it! Above this size they seem to go to 2
platters and go to 25-26mm.

Is there anyone who makes one bigger than 250gig?

Bob

 

[Bob Smith]

I saw an older Maxtor spec sheet from 2006 that listed a
Diamondmax at 20.99mm through 250GB, but then a newer
datasheet from July 2007 shows the PATA/IDE version at 20.99
only through 160GB capacity.
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_dmax.pdf

Since they're now up at 320GB or more per platter, in theory
they could make 320GB but you really need to measure your
drive clearance to know for sure whether 20.99 will fit.

Thanks

Looks like I will go with the 250gig Seagate one, unless I spot a 320gig on
my travels.

Bob

 

[N8N]

Has anyone come across any skinny 3.5" drives?

I have a slimline case with a slimline IDE HDD in that I want to replace. I
have seen the Diamondmax and the Seagate ones up to 250gig both at
around 20mm.  I also saw a 250 gig Diamondmax at 20.99mm, but am not sure if
I will have to bend metal to fit it!  Above this size they seem to go to 2
platters and go to 25-26mm.

Is there anyone who makes one bigger than 250gig?

Bob

Why not investigate the possibility of using a notebook drive with
adapter rails? Those will definitely fit. I just picked up a 250 gig
at Micro Center for about $80. You could probably fit two in if the
case has a dual controller. you'd need the adapter rails and then a
little IDE to notebook adapter card (I think it's just two connectors
and some traces on a circuit board, really.) I don't know if IDE
drives larger than 250 gig are widely available though; I'm at the
point where I'm going to have to make a decision about computers soon,
SWMBO's puter is running out of drive space on C:\ but EIDE drives are
more expensive and smaller than SATA, seems like EIDE is now old
tech. I'm going to do exactly what you suggest with the one I just
bought, put it in a case and use it for backup, because the computer I
bought it for is apparently dead, dead, dead (or at least it didn't
work very well with the old HDD, and I suppose I should have checked
to make sure it would boot from something other than a HDD before I
went out and bought a shiny new one.)

nate

 

[Bob Smith]

Why not investigate the possibility of using a notebook drive with
adapter rails? Those will definitely fit. I just picked up a 250 gig
at Micro Center for about $80. You could probably fit two in if the
vcase has a dual controller. you'd need the adapter rails and then a
little IDE to notebook adapter card (I think it's just two connectors
and some traces on a circuit board, really.) I don't know if IDE
drives larger than 250 gig are widely available though; I'm at the
point where I'm going to have to make a decision about computers soon,
SWMBO's puter is running out of drive space on C:\ but EIDE drives are
more expensive and smaller than SATA, seems like EIDE is now old
tech. I'm going to do exactly what you suggest with the one I just
bought, put it in a case and use it for backup, because the computer I
bought it for is apparently dead, dead, dead (or at least it didn't
work very well with the old HDD, and I suppose I should have checked
to make sure it would boot from something other than a HDD before I
went out and bought a shiny new one.)

nate

I found EIDE and SATA to be pretty close in price for the same model at my
local suppliers, 250gig drives are £34 for SATA and £37 for EIDE (Seagate
Barracuda). I had a look, and the largest laptop IDE they stock is 160gb,
this being £54 + adaptor + adaptor bracket.

Since a 160gig to 250gig is about £2 difference, I was hoping there would be
a similar difference for the 320 gig. 250 will be fine for the machine I am
putting it in though.

Bob

 

[Bob Smith]

I found EIDE and SATA to be pretty close in price for the same model at my
local suppliers, 250gig drives are £34 for SATA and £37 for EIDE (Seagate
Barracuda). I had a look, and the largest laptop IDE they stock is 160gb,
this being £54 + adaptor + adaptor bracket.

Since a 160gig to 250gig is about £2 difference, I was hoping there would
be a similar difference for the 320 gig. 250 will be fine for the machine
I am putting it in though.

Bob

I just had inspiration from the USB external HD thread - I might look at a
ESATA external drive with an internal 3 SATA/1 ESATA PCI card (about £7 off
ebay -already have one on another machine and if works fine). This would
make transferring files a doddle (The ESATA external boxes usually have USB
as well) while still maintaining the full SATA speed on the target machine!

Also less hassle than cloning the system drive and having it show up ad
drive D and not boot etc...

Bob

 

[~misfit~]

Somewhere on teh intarweb "Bob Smith" typed:

I just had inspiration from the USB external HD thread - I might look
at a ESATA external drive with an internal 3 SATA/1 ESATA PCI card
(about £7 off ebay -already have one on another machine and if works
fine). This would make transferring files a doddle (The ESATA
external boxes usually have USB as well) while still maintaining the
full SATA speed on the target machine!

Well, nearly full SATA speed. The PCI bus is limited to 133MB/sec which is
slower than SATA speed but you wouldn't notice in practice.
--
Shaun.

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