Is this an appropriate place to discuss getting new hardware?

If so, read on:

Summary: The most economic upgrade? To add disk space economically without wasting current resources while at the same time taking the opportunity to take advantage of new technology without shelling out £200+ ! I'm the sort of person who chooses a new CPU by dividing a benchmark by price so this decision is complicated!

Basically I've filled up all IDE 4 slots and out of disk space (30gb HD, 10gb HD, CDRW and DVD). And I'd like to add more space in the best way possible.

Now, I have 4 scsi cdroms and 2 scsi slots free... but no drive bays left at all.

I've used old ~4gb SCSI harddrives and loved that way you can set them doing something and they stay solid - you can be writing to 8 drives all at once and still do some Quake without stuttering a GUI or XFree. Now that SCSI interface is being used for the old SCSI cdroms.

I also have a 20gb and 6gb drive sitting unused because I have no IDE channels left.

I'd be looking to add say 80gb+ of space but if possible I'd like to take the opportunity to get something better than my current setup.

If I want SCSI how much is that going to cost? The adapters look very expensive, but I'm unsure what I need. I take it I need a new expensive SCSI adapter for 80gb drives - why is this; speed? What might the total cost of two mirrored 80gb drives be?

Also, RAID. Can drives be mirrored by software of is that unwise? Is restoring the data easy?

And then there's SATA. Does this `feel` more processor independant than IDE or are there no advantages like that at the present time?

So, bearing in mind I certainly don't want to spend >£200 on all this as I only have a 1ghz SDRAM box anyway should I:

- go for a total upgrade with an amazing all singing motherboard; onboard SCSI or SATA perhaps. Taking the opportunity to use DDR RAM and the like. I can probably get AMD processor for cheap to go with this though I'd prefer Intel.

- go with SCSI via a PCI card that can be taken along with next upgrade

- be cheap and replace one of the small ATA drives with a 80gb+ ATA drive; wasting a 10gb drive in the box by replacing it and the 6gb + 20gb drives outside unused

+ then there's SATA-II coming out... soon?

one option for u is to get an external usb hard drive. they aren't too expensive, but i don't know how to compare pounds to dollars. they should be less than 150 pounds for about 100 gig.