EIDE Drives and SATA Drives for Prestige

[BillRoth]

Hi Forum members: After being away for some time I have returned with a question. Is it possible to use the new SATA drives for the prestige. OS 4.d. IDE ATA drives are becoming scarce. I can find a ton of Western Digital but as of the last time I was on the forum these drives had not been tested with acceptable results. Any help appreciated. Thanx, Bill
After thought...As I have been gone from this forum for at least 2+years, what drives a now compatable with the Prestige?
Tks Again, BR

[JPaul]

Hi Bill,

I just ordered and installed two Seagate 160bg drives: Seagate 160G/ST 7K 8M ATA100 ST3160815A
If you do a search you'll find them at several outlets. I got mine at Directron.com for about $52 delievered.

[BobNaughton]

Bill:

To the best of my knowledge, Eide drives or Pata (Parallel) are the only drives that can be used in the Cassie II machines such as the Prestige that you and I have. The Sata are not compatible. I'm not sure about the compatibility of them in the new Bogart Line. Of the Eide drives that are available it looks like only Maxtor,Seagate Hitachi, and IBM are the best choices.

Western Digital drives have always had an issue of not being compatible for some reason. How they are electrically configured I guess. I work in the copier industry as a technician, and have about 200 copiers at Childrens Hospital in Boston which all came out with Maxtor drives from the factory. Over 5 years almost all of the Maxtor's have failed and have been replaced with Western Digital. None of these has ever failed. Go Figure! they seem to hold up to the rigors of vibration, heat and kicking. They kick copiers a lot as you know I wish Western Digital drives were compatible. However, I would stick with Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, IBM, to be on the safe side. Check out the drives Paul mentioned in the earlier post.

[TimKennelly]

Bill,

No you cannot use SATA drives in the generation two machines (Avio through RenPlus) as both the data and power connections are totally different from the PATA connections in the sleds and drive ports of the gen2 machines.

The new third generation machines, aka: S4000Pro uses a SATA drive and cannot use internal PATA drives because of the same issue.

[Martyn]

Tim is correct with Series II Casabalanca but S4000 can actually use either PATA or SATA. All the S4000 Pro I have seen use SATA because I don't think you can get a PATA 1TB hard drive. If I remember correctly they may well have been Western Digital. But some of the S4000 had PATA hard drives and DVD burners. Of course BluRay burners are all SATA. To complicate matters even more, some machines had SATA DVD burners and some had PATA. So if ever you decide to change DVD burner or hard drive in an S4000/pro, look before you leap as adapter or replacement cables may be required.

Martyn
Dalco uk

[TimKennelly]

Martyn,

Are you serious, some of the S4000 series are piece mealed with outdated PATA connectors?!?

[Martyn]

Tim,
The motherboards have both types of connectors so either type of hard drives and DVD burners can be used.

Martyn
Dalco uk

[TimKennelly]

Well that is not bad then.

I have not actually cracked mine open and explored it.

Learn something new every day.

[Martyn]

Removing the lid of the S4000 is not as simple as previous models. First we have the main securing screws which are security heads (not Phillips). Then there are several others which are Phillips (2 sizes) You might see a glint in the eye of the cooling fins designed and poised ready to neatly slice skin from your fingers ..... and be careful not to scrape off the paint from the fins as you slide the cabinet back. (Masking tape is useful here). Prizing the cabinet back proves to be a very useful addition to the manicure set....who needs finger nails anyway? All in all a pretty good design to keep prying eyes and fingers out.

Martyn
Dalco uk