Ask HN: What to do with many old pata hard disks?

Personally, I do not miss the ribbon cables that PATA drive use. It was a pain in the ass to route them, particularly in some MicroATX cases.

Couldn't you use an PCI card to add support for more PATA slots? Certainly someone like Promise probably makes something like that.

Disassemble them and hang the platters from fishing line to keep the bird from shitting on your boat.

That's a total of 1-4Tb. New cost for 4Tb is $220 using two of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148...

10 drives will need a hefty controller, and some mounting system, and they will be hot, noisy and power hungry.

Instead of finding 10 disks and asking how you can cram them into your life, ask what you want in your life and go and get the things that needs. If the disks aren't in there, get rid of them.