Help with HDD Terminology

[flyingsolo]

I'm looking to add 2nd drive to ~4yo Dell P4/2.4GHz/160GB existing drive and 512 RAM. Mainly want to have dual boot to Linux on #2. The Mobo supports IDE but when I'm shopping on-line I don't understand all the numbers/letters quoted in various units. I understand obviously the drive size, SATA v. IDE, rotation speed and buffer size but what about ATA 100 v. ATA 133 or "8ms RoHS" v. "8.9ms FDB" (search times?).

Just don't want to make some dumb error & have an incompatible drive.
Thanks

(by the way, additional thanks to those who helped on my FIRST ever build a month ago which went extremely well--all started up with 1st button push and has hardly been off since!)

[doctorgonzo]

ATA133 is very slightly faster than ATA100. Since sustained transfer speeds (as opposed to burst transfer speeds from the drive cache) are nowhere need maxing out either ATA133 or ATA100's bandwidth, there is very little difference between the two.

As for the other stats, I ignore them. They simply don't matter much, and the only way you could tell the difference between two drives with different search speeds is by using benchmarking software, if at all.

The big things that matter: spindle rotation speed (higher is better), cache (more is better), capacity (ditto), and interface (SATA vs. PATA).

[flyingsolo]

Thanks--I sort of suspected that was the case. One more small thing, is there any reason to expect any limitation on the size of the drive my system would recognize/accomodate and how would I tell? (I expect to look at 200 to 300 GB drives)

[glc]

If it's running a 160 now, the sky is the limit. 137gb is the bios break point.