I'm considering purchasing a Seagate 160GB Barracuda 7200.7 7200RPM SATA II with NCQ Hard Drive
from newegg.com. This is model ST3160827AS.

BTW my processor is an Intel Pentium 4 at 2000 MHz
My machine does not support hyperthreading.

1st question:
Does a hard drive which supports NCQ as compared to one which does not support NCQ
serve any advantage when used with a machine which does not support hyperthreading?

Other questions:
My motherboard does not have an interface for a Serial ATA hard drive.
AFAIK in order to use a SATA drive, I have two options:


Option A: Purchase a PCI controller card that I can connect the SATA drive to.
PCI is limited to 133 per sec right? Does this mean that this configuration
is no better using a IDE PATA 133 drive plugged directly into the motherboard?

Option B: Convert SATA port on the hard drive to PATA and use standard 40 pin IDE cable to
connect drive directly to motherboard. If I do this, is the transfer rate still limited
to 133 mb/sec even though the drive supports up to 150 mb/sec?

Lastly, which option is better or do they both basically suck?


Thanks.