14 DAY TRIAL // PATA might not sound familiar to most people, but that's probably because the interface is an old one, used by older laptops that don't have SATA support. Since cmpanies like HP and others have been cutting support for it left and right, Western Digital is dropping them.
Not that it was something anyone was looking forward to, but it makes sense that such a technology would finally phase out at some point, just like legacy PCI seems to be.
Anyway, WD has stopped making parallel-ATA (PATA or legacy ATA) hard disk drive units (evolved from the original IDE).
The last shipment will take place on December 29 this year (2013).
So if you want one of those 80 GB, 160 GB, 250 GB, 320 GB, 400 GB or 500 GB Caviar PATA units, you may as well hurry and place an order while there are still some left.
From then one, WD will only honor remaining warranties, nothing else.