If you can show me a benchmark or situation where the higher theoretical maximum transfer rate of SATA actually has an advantage over IDE, I'd be interested to see it.
SATA - 1500Mbit/sec (actually more like 150MB/sec) or 3000Mbit/sec (300MB/sec), whereas IDE has a maximum rate of 133MB/sec. Hard drives can't generally transfer data that fast, so the extra 17 or 167 MB/sec transfer rate has no real impact.
Do correct me if I'm wrong.
Also, DVD drives can't read at 52X speed, the maximum is 20X which equates to 211Mbit/sec or 27MB/sec.
I'm not trying to be harsh on you Cheetah, just stating the facts.