I'm thinking of setting up a small RAID 5 config in my new PC. I'm thinking 3 9.1GB drives. This, if I understand it correctly, would give me 18GB of storage and one drive for parity.

These are the drives I was thinking of getting, as to not hit my wallet too hard.

One question I have is: how will these specific drives compare to and IDE drive? At the moment I've got one 20GB 5400RPM and a 25GB 7200RPM, but IDE, although the second might be busted.

This setup will be for my OS drive, as I have a 100GB drive for files (which is almost filled!).

My other major question is: what card should I get for these things? I'm thinking cheap, here, but I want to get maximum throughput from these drives.

Any advice?

ps-one side question for RAM. what is ECC and is it better with or without?