I have a 250GB sata, 7200.8 and the only real match I have here, as far as site code, firmware and everything is an IDE drive. Should these heads work?

Well, I went ahead and tried it anyway. I'm actually surprised that they worked. So yes, in answer to my own question, they are compatible.

Why should that surprise you? I would have been surprised if it had not worked.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I've always had exact matches when it comes to Seagate drives. I didn't see any reason why it wouldn't work, since everything else matched up so I went ahead and tried it. It's no big deal, just pleasantly surprised that it worked perfectly.

The reason I say that I'm not surprised is that it wouldn't make any economic sense (at least not to me) to manufacture a SATA-only HDA and a PATA-only HDA for the same model series.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thank you for shring this infomration with us.
i just compelted a seagate drive with head swap and used different f/w codes and all also worked.

Also, forgot to mention, it's also not a big deal if there are 6 heads in the parts drive as opposed to 4 heads the in the patient.