The best advice I can offer is to look at the Hard Drives article in this month's PcPro (page 153 of the October issue???  I will never understand why they just don't call the current issue August 2004 if they think using an advance date fools anyone, it might reduce? the confusion), the article should appear on their website www.pcpro.co.uk soonish if you can't get a copy.  The article does a comparison between serial and parallel, basially SATA transfers data via a 6 wire cable instead of the 40/80 wire parallel ribbon cable, and that seems to be the main advantage.  Forget the 150MB/sec transfer rate as the disk's mechanics limit the rate to under 60MB/sec the same as the ATA versions of the disks.  Other disadvantages are that SATA drives are more expensive, and that you will require either a SATA motherboard or PCI card to connect the drives.  So it looks like more hype, for the moment at least.  Noel

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