have a choice of h/d upgrades


133 ide 80g maxtor 8 meg cache

or

sata 150 80 g maxtor

what are the differences in speed(not so much benchmarks but what i would see)

£3 difference in price(+£15 for the converter)

2800 barton
7va m/b


should i go with the sata or stick with ata for now?

there is no real speed difference. SATA just have advantages over regarding ease of use and airflow in the case. plus they are hot-swappable, so you dont have to beed if adding/removing a harddisk.

i'm going with sata next time im getting new discs.

seagte SATA disk are in some cases even cheaper then PATA due higher demand .... but its not needed right now .... there is no disk outa there that can beat 133MB/s so don't panic get SATA if you have SATA connector if not just wait ....

I've just got a Maxtor 160GB 8meg cache SATA drive and while the boot up speed wasn't any different coping/moving files was much faster, although before I only had a ATA/100 drive.