I'm contemplating on whether to get either an ata/100 IDE HDD or a SATA 150 HDD for an upgrade. Problem is I've never done this before and I have no idea how to do it, but what the heck. My motherboard has 2 IDE connectors that supports 2 IDE UDMA 100/66/33 connections per connector. It also has 2 SATA 150 connectors. One of the IDE connections has a 80GB, 2MB Cache 7200rpm Maxtor HDD. That drive has all my Windows files in it as a FAT32 file system as I don't have original CD's... long story. What I want to do is 'simply' connect a new HDD to a SATA 150 connector, copy all my files from my old drive into the new drive and presto.. Windows boots fine.
Is this conceivable?
I would appreciate any help you can give me.
Is there much of a performance increase between an ATA 100 IDE HDD that runs at 7200rpm with 16MB cache; and the same connected via SATA 150?

i would suggest you go for a SATA 150 HDD you will find a significant difference in performance and file transfer!...the ATA 100 IDE HDD that runs at 7200rpm with 16MB cache is good too but 1 step short of SATA... but y settle with outdated technology...more and more people are switching to SATA ans SATA II is also in circulation

SATA2 is standard now...SATA is considered old technology
They only have IDE still because there are servers that still use it.

You need to make sure your motherboard will support SATA.

Also - if you purchase a copy of Norton Ghost- you can just "ghost" the hard drive to the new one....will take about 10 minutes.

Definitely SATA2 is the way to go mate.

Tip: where you aware you will not be able to copy your existing hard drive to the new one without using additional software E.g something like nortons ghost. you can't just copy it in windows it won't boot!