saying that SATA "is much faster than IDE" is a blatant lie. theoretically, yes SATA does allow for much higher speeds and the higher performance drives like the Raptor are much faster (keep in mind Raptor's are also a lot faster than standard SATA drives as well). but the fact is average sustained speeds of comparable SATA drives and IDE drives are not all that different. SATA is a bit faster though. where the difference comes in is that each drive is on a dedicated channel rather than 2 drives per channel. using 2 drives on one channel is considerably slower. SATA cables are much easier to work with as they are much smaller and they are keyed to only be inserted one way unlike IDE cables which could be accidentally inserted backwards in some cases.