I'm planning on reformatting at some point, just to start over. I'm also thinking of doing a little upgrading and possibly adding some storage to my system.

I currently have, as an OS disk, the 80GB Western Digital PATA w/8MB buffer.

First question: how much difference would I see if I went with the 74GB Raptor drive? I do quite a bit of video editing/conversion, DVD authoring, and a lot with video in general. Would this help?

Second question: will I have any problems installing an OS on a drive on an SATA card? Will that decrease performance? Will it be able to live peacefully with other SATA drives on the card? I'm not interested in having a RAID at this point.

Third question: given the above activities, what other upgrades would you guys suggest? I'm really trying to speed up conversion speeds, as it takes the longest time. Would better RAM help a little? I currently have slightly better than generic PC2100 RAM. Would I benefit from some Crucial 3200?

Lastly: has anyone here done HD video capturing? I've asked Bruno some questions about ATI's card, which I don't think I'll be able to use because I don't really want to "upgrade" to XP. I'm also not at all a fan of ATI's windows software (not Bruno's fault ). I'm actually not looking for any software beyond "tune and capture." I'm mainly interested in getting widescreen, high-quality copies of my favorite shows this coming season, and watching them on my TV. I'm less interested in scheduling and PVR software for watching on my computer. I've got plenty of space for HD captures, and the know-how to convert them, but don't know what hardware is recommended. I'm hoping for somethign sub-$200.

Thanks for any help on so many questions As usual, I'll probably go straight from here and find the perfect solution to all my problems I'll let you all know if I do

*edit*
Well, this time I did find the solution that looked the most appealing to me, but sadly it only works with Linux. You Linux people out there should take a look at it, though. It seems nice.