What to do with this drive?

FXB

New Member
I found an old external HDD we bought a few years back and now I can't find the power cord. What could I do with it?

it's a Maxtor 300gb PATA drive. I wanted to put it in my new build but my mobo doesn't have a pata port .
 
The only way you are going to be able to use that drive, installed inside your machine, if your mobo does not have an IDE port, is by installing an IDE controller card in one of your PCI slots, assuming your mobo has any PCI slots.
 
Your Maxtor is a newer one, and as such may be unreliable. But I have found older Maxtors, (Diamond Max Series), to be extremely reliable. Much more so than either Samsung, Seagate, or Western Digital. TESTHDD has shown varing degrees of damage on my drives of all of those makes. Seagate worst, Samsung second worst, then Western Digital, and finally Maxtor Diamond Max, best of all. As for that IDE controller card, they come alot better than that, and you can probably pick up a second hand one for considerably less. Usually they have 2 ports, and will support 4 IDE devices.

However, if you decide that it isn't worth doing anything with that Maxtor, would you sell it to me ?
 
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Your Maxtor is a newer one, and as such may be unreliable. But I have found older Maxtors, (Diamond Max Series), to be extremely reliable. Much more so than either Samsung, Seagate, or Western Digital. TESTHDD has shown varing degrees of damage on my drives of all of those makes. Seagate worst, Samsung second worst, then Western Digital, and finally Maxtor Diamond Max, best of all. As for that IDE controller card, they come alot better than that, and you can probably pick up a second hand one for considerably less. Usually they have 2 ports, and will support 4 IDE devices.

However, if you decide that it isn't worth doing anything with that Maxtor, would you sell it to me ?
^ Yeah, if you look on ebay you'll probably be able to find a better card for cheaper. Still, I chose the one I did because it had the HDD LED plug, so the hard drive light on your case can light up. You should still definitely check ebay, though. ;)
 
Thanks for the tip Spynoodle it's probably not worth it

If you are not willing to get it in working order, and you know there is important data on it, don't sell it to anyone unless you know they are trust worthy. If you don't know anyone like that, drive a nail through it a couple of times and bin it.

Though honestly, that is an awful waste of perfectly good hardware, I would try to do SOMETHING with it
 
If you are not willing to get it in working order, and you know there is important data on it, don't sell it to anyone unless you know they are trust worthy. If you don't know anyone like that, drive a nail through it a couple of times and bin it.

Though honestly, that is an awful waste of perfectly good hardware, I would try to do SOMETHING with it
+1 for the trustworthy sale thing. If you do want to sell it, try to find a computer with a built-in IDE controller, so you can run one of the programs that wipes the hard drive several times through, making sure to permanently delete all data.
I highly advise against using the drive, considering I've never seen a newer Maxtor live to be more than 1 year old.
Of course, like Aastii said, you could still do something with it. Maybe take it apart and make crafts out of the disks or something. THAT would be fun. :)
 
Can't I get some sort of adapter? Or is the IDE controller that?
You can get IDE-SATA adapters, but I've heard that they have problems. I recommend this for a basic wipe:
http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-IDE-SAT...600?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a09a0a1f8
It's a USB to SATA/IDE adapter. I just got one of these, and it's worked great so far. Make sure to put in some offers before you pay the full buy-it-now price. Ebay lets you put in 3 offers. If they all get rejected, then you either pay full price or don't buy it. There are also some other sellers selling the same thing for slightly cheaper, if your offers get rejected. The one I got is the kind wit the little dots on the power supply, from the same seller that I listed. I try not to buy from Chinese sellers, so I usually select "US only" when I search. :)
 
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