[conspire] new computer?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Tony Godshall (togo at of.net):

> I would go with modern SSD and an IDE adapter (msata-ide) over buying
> actual legacy IDE drives.

There was no real question of Paul being in the market for a new PATA
('IDE') drive, even if the (allegedly) failing drive had been PATA,
which it wasn't.  If that _had_ been the case, and he wanted to replace
the (allegedly) failing PATA drive, the logical replacement would have
been a second, large, modern SATA drive on the motherboard's second 
SATA connector, not anything new including an mSATA-to-PATA adapter on
either of the two PATA connectors.  Because KISS.

In addition, the guess that the drive is failing does not IMO seem
well-supported.  The obvious thing Paul should try is the Seagate
Tools's so-called 'zero fill erase option', which I mentioned upthread.
This is, I gather, Seagate's current implementation for IDE of the
traditional low-level format routine.

I mention this because one should always attempt to recondition
allegedly failing hard drives with low-level formatting before giving up
on them, unless there is some separate reason for getting rid of them,
like they're ridiculously small and/or slow for the current year's
needs, or they keep emitting smoke, or they are now cruising at a
constant zero RPM.

But, as you say, I would definitely consider SSDs first if pondering a
drive replacement in preference to a new hard drive.  The benefits are
ludicrously large.