Retrofitting SATA drive into old desktop - Adapter or PCI SATA card?

So here's the story:

I'm gonna give my 15-year-old HP Pavilion 500d desktop an overhaul when I'm back to HK a few months later, currently sourcing some parts to max its potential.

Don't tell me to throw it away or say "You're still keeping this POS!?" or something like that. I know it's a POS (mobo, PSU, HDD have been replaced), it's old and slow, but this is my very first computer so I wanna keep it as long as possible. So yeah piss off, I'll go ahead with this project no matter how nonsense it is, even if it only runs for a day and it goes puff. I'm not gonna use it as a daily driver anyway, no fancy OC on it too, I just wanna have something to mess with and have a laugh in the end.

Here's the specs of my desktop:

• Epox EP-3WTM3 ATX motherboard
• Intel Celeron (Tualatin) 133MHz FSB @ 1.2GHz
• No RAM (Original 256MB module went to a Coppermine desktop)
• No HDD (Original 40GB HDD went to a Mendocino desktop)
• 250W power supply

I checked it last year and it booted just fine with RAM installed so I know the parts are good, and this one is fairly powerful compared to many of my low-power thin clients so sure I can handle its "slowness", probably will run Windows XP or lightweight Linux distros on it.

As of now I've already collected some upgrade parts for this project:

• 2 x 512MB PC-133 SDRAM modules
• PNY Nvidia GeForce FX5500 128MB PCI graphics card
• 2-port USB 2.0 backplate
• IDE DVD drive
• Used slim case + new 250W SFX power supply (may or may not use them)

Now you may wonder where the hard drive is, well this is where I'm stumbling at right now. It's quite hard to find a usable large IDE drives nowadays (note that eBay doesn't exist in HK) so I'd like to buy a used SATA drive instead. Obviously for such an antique there's no SATA ports on the mobo, so I'll have to find a way to get around it. Currently I have come with two different approaches:

1. A SATA-to-IDE adapter - self-explanatory, it converts SATA interface to IDE interface, I've used the 2.5" drive version in my older thin clients and quite happy with them, speed capped at 100MB/s but rock solid so far. Never tried the 3.5" drive version though
2. A PCI SATA card - using VIA VT6421A chipset, it adds two internal SATA ports and one external through PCI bus, speed capped at 133MB/s, lower if more drives connected, never tried this one so don't know its reliability

Have anyone used such things before and can give a word on their reliability? I'm not for speed, I just want a stable solution but IDE drive is not an option, I wanna have more storage options.

 

Because installing XP with external raid drivers is so much fun I'd go for an adapter.

 

Yeah just remembered Win XP doesn't support this SATA card natively, moreover I've found the SATA ports on this card aren't bootable, from the comments in Amazon. What a bummer, guess I'll stick with the good old adapter then, time to order more!

P.S. If possible I'll make a thread on reviving my oldie too.

 

@OverTallman why not show the system some love, and get a cheap SSD instead? Would be great, especially if you put Linux instead of ancient XP on it.

 

You mean like your Wave SSD? That would be a good option

 

That's too expensive to me, a Wave 128GB mSATA SSD costs about £30 now, almost the price I paid for the rest of upgrade parts, man I don't wanna turn this project into a money pit. My E5510 is still running a 320GB HDD, well I do hope for an SSD especially when most of my workhorses are already using one but unless I can find a decent >320GB SSD at around £20-30 I'm not gonna pull the trigger, now you know how cheapskate I can be (and I'm proud of it really).

Moreover, even if it's running SSD, the Tualatin and SDRAM are another bottlenecks, in fact I think they're the bigger ones than the speed of HDD. I'm not gonna abandon my old desktop just because of that though.

And don't forget I'm gonna use an old Nvidia card (FX5500), if its performance in Linux isn't good then I'll have to revert back to good old XP, which can be an issue for the SSD.