Seagate waves goodbye to IDE hard drives

CHANNEL SOURCES said Seagate has briefed them that it's the end of the road for IDE hard drives. Or files, as IBM ludicrously continued to call them for years.

Nearly all top end drives are likely to go the serial ATA (S-ATA) route by the end of the year.

Parallel ATA has had a long run but will soon follow eight inch floppy drives, 5.25-inch drives and 3.5-inch floppies on the road to nowhere. Channel sources said Seagate roadmaps show IDE is at the end of the, er, road.

So soon vast libraries of information will be stored on drives and become as incomprehensible to future generations as Etruscan is to us.

On a brighter note, it looks like there will be a heck of lot of activity on the P-ATA front until the end of the year. And where Seagate goes, the others are sure to follow. Although no doubt as IBM's successor on the hard drive front, Hitachi Data Systems will beg to differ. µ