For 5 year old XP machine - New IDE or SATAII

[veritasffg]

A little 20 gb system drive in a 5 year old XP PC, which has only motherboard based IDE controllers, appears to be failing - it's started an intermittent clicking - after which windows shuts down.  I had plans to replace the drive anyway with at least a 160 gb drive.  My question is, since I would probably use the new HDD in the old machine for no more than a couple of years, and then install that drive in a much newer, quad core Vista machine, does it not make sense to get a SATA II drive, with an IDE-SATA adaptor, to at least insure that, in the future, at least, I would be able to use that same drive with no loss in its inherent speed capability?  Are the experts out there aware of something I'm not considering?

By the way, the only use I have for the older machine is to use it for testing (both software & hardware) on my network of 3 machines.

[Spoiler]

What are the rest of the specs of machine? RAM...CPU...etc?

[Calum]

As IDE drives tend to be a little more expensive than a same capacity SATA drive, my advice would be to get a PCI SATA card and a SATA hard drive.
Then you can use the SATA drive in another machine and the PCI card may come in handy again sometime.
320Gb drives are cheap now by the way, it may be worth spending a little extra for the capacity - if you get a decent warranty too it'll last you.

[veritasffg]

For Spoiler:  The CPU is a 1.5 ghz P4, it has 512 mb RAM, one cheap CD ROM drive, one cheap CD-RW Drive, one Floppy Drive.  I don't see it as having much intrinsic value - except for the purpose I have in mind - mainly as a testing platform for hardware and software solutions. 

For Calum:  I really don't see that I'll have a future use for a PCI SATA card (I assume that would cost more than an IDE/SATA adapter - right?).  You are, of course correct about larger capacity drives being inexpensive today, and I may well take your advice and get one much larger than 160 gb.  My original plan, however, was to try to keep my overall cost in the older machine as low as possible.  By the way, I already have a terabyte of storage in my quad core machine, which will likely be the recipient of the new drive, at such time as I unload the older PC.

Thanks to both of you.

[soybean]

For Calum:  I really don't see that I'll have a future use for a PCI SATA card (I assume that would cost more than an IDE/SATA adapter - right?). 

Not necessarily.  If you're in the U.S., look here: sata controller card

[Calum]

If you already have a lot of storage then fair enough.  It's just that for the best value for money larger drives are more cost effective.
I see $9.99 for a 2 SATA/1 IDE PCI card.  It may be useful, it may not, but it's just an idea.

[veritasffg]

In checking out the prices on various SATA cards - I see a number of them are PCI Express cards - which I gather is a newer, better type of PCI board.  Am I correct that this older PC does not support PCI Express?  Also, I will probably buy a SATA II drive, but I notice that SATA II (which is of course much faster than SATA) cards are much more expensive?  I assume a SATA II drive will be supported by a SATA card, but will have its maximum capacity cut in half.  Assuming I am willing to accept the reduction in speed, is there any other negative aspect to connecting a SATA II drive to a SATA card?  Finally, is there some specification which I can look for to guarantee the SATA card will support drives larger than the 137 gb barrier?

Sorry for all the questions, but this thing turned out to be a little more complex than I originally envisioned.

By the way - thanks for the reference to prices.

[Calum]

SATA2 does offer a theoretical maximum transfer rate of twice SATA.
However, as far as I know no disks out there are close to using the bandwidth provided by the 1st gen SATA port.  Therefore there would be no increase in speeds.
I would also think that all SATA drives and controllers will be able to pass the 137Gb barrier, I've never had any issues with that anyway.
The older PC may or may not support PCI-Express.  There's no real speed advantage to be gained through using it over standard PCI as far as I'm aware.

[veritasffg]

Calum:  Thanks for responding to my questions.  I'm considering getting a SIIG combo board, with USB2, Firewire, and SATA ports.  That would provide three major upgrades of this old machine for SIIG's price of $69.  Guess I'll check to see what the street price would be, unless you're aware of some reason this might not be a good idea.

Thanks again.

[Calum]

If you think that the USB2 and Firewire ports are worth the extra cash over just a SATA card, then go ahead, there's no reason not to.

[patio]

On top of that SIIG's cards i have found to be very good quality...