what kind of hard drive.....

im going to get a 250gb hdd.....what should i get?.....price range from 90 to 120....wuts the difference b/w a 3.0gb/s and a normal one?

ATA133 is about as fast as any drives go today. SATA is great, that's what I'm running, but I don't think drives have quite caught up to the actual connection performace.

My suggestion, just find a good deal. Of course you're limited to what you're motherboard can take, but I wouldn't suggest paying much more for SATA, or espcially SATA300 yet...

you can buy PATA to SATA and SATA to PATA adapters. They are on ebay and about $15 or at the local computer stores for $30 - $ 40. SATA is still IDE it is just serial OR (S)erial ATA and PATA is (P)arallel ATA or PATA, the flat grey cable...both still IDE. go to newegg.com , great prices on hard drives and they are one of the fastest shippers I have ever seen.

Just remember that these adaptors won't allow an IDE drive to run faster than ATA/133. In fact, it will cause the drive to run slightly slower.

How cant the HDDs run at SATAII? I have it, is there any way to tell the bandwith its at now?

what is a "normal one"? do you mean 1.5gb/s? if so, thats the difference right there, 1.5. you might as well go for sata, considering the difference between two identical drives (one being ata, the other being sata) is only going to be about 10-20 bucks.