Topic: quick laptop harddrive question

[JasonSobel]

I have to replace the harddrive on my sister-in-law's old laptop (it's an old IBM laptop, probably 7-8 years old, if I had to guess).  I took out the old one, it's a 2.5" drive, and it says that it's an ATA/IDE drive.  As far as I know, that's an older type of drive, and not compatible with the newer SATA drives, is that correct?  So for the replacement, I need a new ATA/IDE drive, yes?

Over at newegg.com, if I go to the "laptop hard drives" sub-category, on the left, it will let me search for drives via interface.  I see the following choices:

• ATA-6
• SATA 1.5Gb/s
• SATA 3.0Gb/s
• Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)

so, my questions are:  do I want the ATA-6 drives?  am I wrong about SATA not being compatible?  if so, does it matter if I go with 1.5Gb/s or 3.0 Gb/s?

and, if it matters, the old drive was 40GB, and we want to replace it with the cheapest drive possible.  it looks like there's are plenty of choices for an 80GB ATA-6 drive for $60; newegg.com has WD, Seagate, Fujitsu, Samsung, and Hitachi drives for $60.

thansk for any help.

- Jason

[JasonSobel]

ok, so after a little google searching, I think what I want is a PATA drive, which, according to wikipedia:

"With the market introduction of Serial ATA in 2003, the original ATA was retroactively renamed Parallel ATA (PATA)."

is that right?  so newegg.com doesn't even sell the PATA drives? (although it looks like several other online places carry the older type of drive).

[kskreider]

Jason I would just pull the drive cover off the laptop and LOOK at what part # is written on the native drive.  Do a Google search and then just match it with a replacement type.  If the laptop is 3+ years old it is most likely PATA.  If it is 2 or so there is a chance that it is SATA which is the 1.5GB/s that you have listed above.  SATAII is 3.0GB/s and will really only be in a much newer PC laptop.

Most laptops have easy access doors to three items, the memory, the hard drive and the wireless card.  Certainly to the first two at the least.

[JasonSobel]

yes, I already pulled the old drive out of there.  it says ATA/IDE on it, and it's definitely more than 3 years old.  the hard drive itself is dated Nov 2002.  so it looks like PATA is what I'm now looking for.

thanks.

[JasonSobel]

ahh, or do you mean that actual model number.  a google search of "IBM IC25N040ATCS05-0" brought me to this webpage:
http://www.ultratecdirect.com/stocklists/searchresults.jsp?textSearch=IC25N040ATCS05-0

which says:

Interface Group     PATA (IDE, UDMA, EIDE)

So I guess that confirms it.  thanks again for your help.

- Jason

[phanophish]

Have a look here...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?Recs=10&Nav=|c:2675|&Sort=4

EIDE=PATA