Hard DiskAccording to the The Inquirer, sources from within the channel reports Seagate as having briefed them that it’s the end of the road for IDE hard drives.

It appears that Seagate plans to cease manufacturing IDE hard drives by the end of the year and will focus exclusively on SATA-based products instead.

This would hardly be surprising news, given that SATA has overtaken PATA as the interface of choice for the hard drive connectivity. Perhaps more importantly, SATA has become the main interface for the primary hard drive connectivity as well — the majority of OEM system shipments now contain a SATA-based hard drive instead of a PATA one.

Compared to the pace of adoption of other technologies such as the floppy drive, USB, Bluetooth, etc., SATA has virtually blazed past the finishing line to establish itself as the new de facto standard.

Not to panic though, as Ars Technica puts it:

That’s not to say support for the 21-year-old PATA standard is going to vanish overnight; 34 percent of global hard drives [are still PATA ones, and that] is still an awful lot of hardware…

… this means that most motherboard manufacturers will probably keep at least one PATA slot around for awhile longer, similar to how ISA slots were available long after most of us had ditched our old ISA peripherals.

It is worth noting that while Seagate might be the first major hard drive manufacturer to announce such plans, there is little doubt that where Seagate goes, the others are sure to follow soon.

If all hard disks sold in 2008 are SATA ones, how well or badly will you fare?