wrote:

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?

Yes, NCQ is internal to the hard drive and has nothing to do with 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?

All other things being equal the performance would be the same. Some newer features e.g. NCQ could give SATA an advantage.

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?

Yes.

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

Either option would work, but I would not pay more for a SATA drive rather than a parallel drive until I was convinced that NCQ is worth the money.


--

Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.