Seagate External HDD Enclosure ST300003U2

[Logistics]

I have this older Seagate external HDD enclosure with a 160GB drive inside that is one its way out so I'd like to replace it, but I'm curious, are there limitations to what I can replace it with? Obviously, it's a PATA drive, uses an 80-pin cable and standard Molex 4-pin for power. But do I need to research the internal IC's to see if there are any practical limits to what size it can accomodate?

I just want to put a long-lasting drive in it for the purpose of storing pictures and videos that the wife seems to accumulate so quickly. This way I don't have to keep storing everything on my system, and clearing off her main drive whenever she has software issues.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Seagate External HDD Enclosure ST300003U2

Well, make sure it's a normal PATA drive.

Usually if it can do 160GB, it can do higher. Keep in mind that they don't make PATA drives anymore and you're stuck with NOS at best, and I'm not even sure they made 1TB PATA drives. You may be better off locating a SATA enclosure of some sort, whether it be a NAS or whatever.

[stj]

Re: Seagate External HDD Enclosure ST300003U2

they did go upto a TB, but 500MB was more common - we used to put them in x-boxes.

[Logistics]

Re: Seagate External HDD Enclosure ST300003U2

Well, a 500GB would be fine. I see the Caviar Blue's on Amazon for not too much. Any suggestion for drives with greater longevity? Performance is not the goal, here just lifetime.

[brethin]

Re: Seagate External HDD Enclosure ST300003U2

I have a 750 gb Seagate ST3750640A 7200.10 I can part with. It's new old stock, if your interested pm me a offer.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Seagate External HDD Enclosure ST300003U2

750GB seems the most common large parallel ATA drive, I can't seem to find a good example of a 1TB parallel ATA drive anymore if I've ever seen one...

I think I retired my 750GB PATA somewhere, mostly because it had no mates for a RAID.

[Curious.George]

Re: Seagate External HDD Enclosure ST300003U2

I have this older Seagate external HDD enclosure with a 160GB drive inside that is one its way out so I'd like to replace it, but I'm curious, are there limitations to what I can replace it with? Obviously, it's a PATA drive, uses an 80-pin cable and standard Molex 4-pin for power. But do I need to research the internal IC's to see if there are any practical limits to what size it can accomodate?

If it can actually SEE all of the 160GB drive, then it doesn't have an LBA24 limitation (common on some external enclosures -- esp those that serviced optical disk drives). So, that likely means LBA48 (LBA64 is too new for PATA) which implies maybe ~100PB capacity.

I just want to put a long-lasting drive in it for the purpose of storing pictures and videos that the wife seems to accumulate so quickly. This way I don't have to keep storing everything on my system, and clearing off her main drive whenever she has software issues.

Why not find a similar SATA-based enclosure? I've been dumping the various PATA external enclosures because:

• they don't all support LBA48 (and ~130GB is way too tiny, today)
• they're all USB2 (which has practical throughput limitations)
• if the enclosure fails, I can't just throw the drive in a spare enclosure (cuz the rest are moving to SATA/USB3)

[Keep in mind that if you ever want to pull ALL of the data off that drive (and don't have a PATA-based PC in which to install it), it gets painfully slow as capacity increases -- figure 500GB as the largest "practical" size]

Oh, and pictures quickly fill disks -- esp when the photographer realizes they can shoot in the highest resolution (or even RAW) for very little additional cost!

[Have her look into ThumbsPlus to catalog her pix]

You can also look into a NAS box so that store can be shared among multiple machines (if you have a local network). This may be cheaper than slapping a disk in an existing enclosure. They can usually support two external (USB) drives in addition to the 2/4/6/8TB internal drive(s).

[Curious.George]

Re: Seagate External HDD Enclosure ST300003U2

Well, a 500GB would be fine. I see the Caviar Blue's on Amazon for not too much. Any suggestion for drives with greater longevity? Performance is not the goal, here just lifetime.

An advantage of moving "rarely used stuff" onto an external drive is that you can spin that drive down (and most do so, automatically) for the days/weeks/months between uses.

I have some 1.5T seacrates that are easily 5 or 6 years old...

[Logistics]

Re: Seagate External HDD Enclosure ST300003U2

Why not find a similar SATA-based enclosure?

[Keep in mind that if you ever want to pull ALL of the data off that drive (and don't have a PATA-based PC in which to install it), it gets painfully slow as capacity increases -- figure 500GB as the largest "practical" size]

Oh, and pictures quickly fill disks -- esp when the photographer realizes they can shoot in the highest resolution (or even RAW) for very little additional cost!

Because I just love the way this Seagate enclosure looks--it's like a tank compared to the anodized paperweights I see, nowadays. And I could always refinish it to look more modern. I don't mind dividing the drive up into multiple partitions, even 100GB partitions.