New System - SATA question

[coville]

After all these years I'm looking to build a new system. I'm currently running OS/2 and Win98 on a PPro1800 w/ 125 megs ram CDRW and 2 SCSI and 1 IDE HD totaling over 4 gigs of HD space. Since my wife gave me a 19 Viewsonic flatpanel for X'mas I decided it's time for a new system. I 'm looking at the follwoing from NewEgg:
ASUS IEEE802.11b Adapter for ASUS Motherboards
AHANIX Platinum XP (GRAY) 9-BAY
Antec 430W Power Supply, Model "TRUE430"
Asus nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU, Model "A7N8X-E
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ "Barton", 400MHz FSB, 512K Cache Processor - Retail
ASUS GeForce FX5200 Video Card, 128MB DDR, 64-bit, TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "V9520 Magic/T" -RETAIL
for$650
Wanted the :Kingwin(Black)Aluminum 10-Bay Mid-Tower Case,with a Large Side Window,KT-424-BK-WM.
but it was out of stock.
Have 512 DDR3200 Kingston Dual channel to put in the above system.

I want to move my HDs into the new system to get started but in the end I'll need to add a new , bigger HD. I'll be installing a DVD burner in the next couple months . One goal is to get home videos burned to DVD Should I order the SATA HD now or wait letting the prices come down? Is SATA the way to go at this point or should I stay with ATA HD's? If I install an ATA HD now will it have any effect on the performance of the SATA drive added later? I've always installed the OS on the fPrimary drive on the first connection and placed the swap drive and temp folders/cache on the first drive on the second connection.

I'll start w/ moving my HD's w/ OS intact but I plan to add to the bigger HD Linux, replace Win '98 w/ XP and possible go from OS/2 to eComstation.
Thanks for any advise!

 

[islandtechengineers]

well... SATA is the new technology and its here to stay. It does offer a HIGH increase on the speed of hardrive performance. most likey if your looking for a system that you want to keep for a couple of years to come without it being outdated as they say... sata is the way, if your curious about price, performance and being outdated= at this moment I believe there are mother boards on production that will allow you to attach BOTH IDE and SATA hardrives. hey if you want to save the cash. get a board with built in raid, use your current IDE drives, when sata gets a little cheaper, then to drop them in. Most likely these boards will allow you to use both sata and IDE at the same time; as for the performance affection while using both sata and ide, that should be based on the motherboards capabitlies. You gotta research it, there are a lot of companies out there that are already benchmarking sata and ides for comparison.... such as one of my favs = maximum pc. supposably you'll get better performance out of your ata hardrives if the primary for install your progs is on a master channel and the other ide drive for cacheing is also the primary on a secondary channel. if you have the install drive as primary and the cache drive as secondary on the same channel as the install drive, there will be a little slower responce time. hey its food for thought, research all the products out there before you decide to jump into one, and hit the web for benchmarking results..... gluck on your project.

 

[eklass]

as per islandtechengineers's comments, I would say that it would be smart to spend a couple extra bucks and utilize the technology now. sure SATA2 is in development, but SATA as a whole isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I personally like it becasue I can have my many optical drives hooked up at once. ATM I have 120GB SATA, 20GB ATA, CD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD. All this and I have room for another drive due to the extra SATA headers. It's great cuase there's no master/slave/cable select settings, however, you will have to get ahold of the controller driver prior to installing Windows

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: eklass
however, you will have to get ahold of the controller driver prior to installing Windows

I learned this the hard way last weekend when setting up my new system. Fortunately, I have another computer at home but it didn't have a floppy drive hooked up so I had to open it up and put a floppy drive in it before I could copy the files for my new system. ASUS has a make disk utility and the drivers for the Promise RAID array and their Southbridge SATA controller on the driver CD but Windows doesn't seem to want to look there for the drivers-the only option is the A: drive. Thanks Micro$oft for making a simple task a real PITA.

 

[JulesMaximus]

BTW-Why not go with Athlon 64?

 

[coville]

Thanks for all the SATA info.

Originally posted by: JulesMaximus
BTW-Why not go with Athlon 64?

Funny you should ask. After posting the same inquiry in general computing I've decided to go with the AMD 64 3000+ on an Asus K8V Deluxe. Just picked up from Office Max a WD 120gig HD, 7200rpm and 8meg buffer for $50 after rebate and an 8X DVD burner for $70 after rebate. and to complete my bargain system (~$835 total) I'm going w/ ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 9600 PRO. I'll probably add an SATA HD or two later but this gets me up and running in an acceptable cost with a system I'll be happy with.
Thanks to all for the help.

 

[Willoughbyva]

I used to use OS/2, but it doesn't support the newer hardware. It was kind of neat to use back in the day. Since you are into alternative OS's leave about 10 gigs of hard drive space empty and give Linux a try. Mandrake, Red Hat, and Suse are newbie friendly.