"upgrading" old machine HDD

C0RR0SIVE

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So, I have a Win98/XP machine that sits around for playing older games, and recently the HDD bit the dust. I have been seeing a lot of retro builds going towards SD and CF cards. I basically just want input on what route I should go based on my hardware.

Athlon XP 3200+
MSI K7n2 Delta-ILSR (Has onboard promise RAID controller with SATA)
512MB DDR-400
XFX 5900XT

So my question is this, what route should I go for storage?

IDE > CF Adapter > CF Card
IDE > SD Adapter > SD Card
IDE > SATA Adapter > SSD

As far as I know, the PROMISE controller doesn't support booting from the on board SATA for Win98. Any recommendations on adapters/cards/disks? This isn't a dual-boot system, I plan to swap cards or disks as needed.
 
You might be better off with just a platter sata drive. I'm not sure if an SSD will show you much improvement with an old pc because I tried an SSD in an old laptop at one time and there wasn't much gain to justify the cost at that time. SSD's are way cheaper today so it might not be too painful on your wallet just to check it out. The bus speed, pci lanes and memory are all limited to see better speed. Of course this does depend on the age of the "old pc" your talking about but if it had XP running on it, then don't expect a lot.
You can get Sata to IDE adapters for fairly cheap.
https://www.amazon.com/Female-SATA-Adapter-Converter-bidirectional/dp/B001PYSAJI
Chances are low that you'll find a new IDE drive

Use that Promise Controller:
Back in those day's you had to use the F6 option to install a sata driver during the o.s. install for 98/xp. If you still have a floppy drive, that was the most popular option to install the sata driver. I think you can "slip stream" a sata driver into an xp install iso and burn that to a disk but I don't know if that can be done with '98
Sata/Raid driver:
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/K7N2_DeltaL_ILSR#down-driver&Win%2098%20SE
Side Note: You could probably use Windows 2000 and still have your '98 software work with that
Answer to your question:
promise sata controller> sata drive
(install sata driver during install)
I think that an XP SP2 install disk does have native sata drivers.... but I can't remember
 
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I bought a cheap no name SSD 64GB for my 98 box and used an IDE to SATA (it actually goes both ways) and it works WONDERS for that machine. I would definitely go that route if you're serious about upgrading the storage.
 
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