for my S-I-L's HP Pavilion 753n rig. MB does not support SATA and I do not trust IDE/SATA cable adaptors. I see refurbished ones on Newegg, etc and was wondering if they would be reliable?  I guess there are still a few brand new IDE Internal HD's out there?

I would also like to upgrade RAM but based on the Crucial scan and HP specs, it appears the max she can take is 1 GB? Can anyone confirm the 1 GB upper limit? Thanks. If indeed your HDD has gone bad, you must replace it ASAP.
Refurbished IDE drives are a good investment if the vendor is honest. NewEgg is a well-known vendor and can, IMO, be trusted to honor the warranty.
There are other vendors out there. You have a choice. N notice that many show up first in a search because they pay the search engine company  to do that. But that might not be bad.
Some offer very low cost, but they get you on the shipping.

Yes, I agree. Get an IDE drive rather that use an adapter. New IDE is now getting harder to find, so refurbished is a good choice. See if you can get it with a one year warranty
IMHO you should not pay more that $60 for a refurbished PATA drive. (IDE). Abd less that $10 for shipping. And a warranty of at least 90 days.

EDIT:On eBay there are over 1,000 IDE drives for sale under $90 and some with FREE shipping. Of course, shopping on eBay has its ISSUES.




There's TONS of IDE HDD's available out there...instead of refurbished.
How hard did you look and where ? ? Quote from: patio on August 08, 2014, 08:41:17 PM

There's tons of IDE HDD's available out there...instead of refurbished.
How hard did you look and where ? ?

Yes...Seagate makes fine HDD's.

Thanks Patio. What do you think about the relatively high failure rates for Seagate experienced by Backblaze? Maybe failure rates for large commercial drives do not apply to small internal drives?

...
So, Newegg sells 160GB IDE WD for $60 vs $30 for Seagate. What does the extra $30 get you? It appears the drives have the same specs and warranty. Too late though, I already bought the WD and Newegg says it is too late to change the order. Oh well.

Under the terms of the agreement, Seagate will acquire WD for $4.5 billion in cash and 122 million Seagate's common shares valued at $6.8 billion, based on a Seagate closing stock price of $55.92 as of April 1, 2014.

... transaction has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is expected to close during the first calendar quarter of 2015, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.
Seagate expects the transaction to be immediately accretive to its earnings per share on a non-GAAP basis, excluding acquisition-related expenses, restructuring charges and ...