To buy or not, that is the question

Technically its a a SATA 3.0 Gps not SATA 2.

Which means the interface is 2.5 times faster than the first generation SATA 150 (MBps)/

What does that mean? Basically nothing.

Both standards are forwarda and backwards compatible and no SATA drive can break the 100 MBps barrier let alone 150 MBps. Nor do drives share buses.

And the 3.0 drives are not even better/newer or faster. Western Digitals enterprise drives the Raptor's and the Raid Editions are all SATA 150.

BTW

SATA is superior regular IDE (Parallel ATA) because each drives gets its own channel and the cables are thinner and can run much longer and SATA supports hot swapping.

So SATA is the right choice, but the version simply doesn't matter.

80GB seems kinda small (but then again its highly dependent on yoru usage). SATA II is a set of features that was not included in SATA 1. There is also SATA 2.5 which adds a few things to SATA II like staggered drive spin up, among other things.

Let me see if I can't break it down like a fraction:

SATA 1:
150 MB/s

SATA II:
300 MB/s
Tagged Command Queing (I think)

SATA 2.5:
300MB/s
Staggered Drive Spin Up
Native Command Queing
Port Hot Plugging
External-SATA support

Result: When you break it down SATA 1 is all you really need. No hard drive saturates the SATA 1 point-to-point connection. The SATA 2.5 features all in all aren't worth a whole hell of alot to the average user. Staggered drive spin up is nice because it will spin up one hard drive at a time to reduce the intial draw on a power supply. Native Command Queing will rearrange read/write commands into a more efficient order but the advantage only really shows up in frequent random access enviorments like file servers. Port Hot Plugging is only if you plan to swap out drives while the system is on, and E-SATA is exactly like it sounds.

My Advice: if you already have a hard drive with enough space, dont bother buying a new hard drive just for SATA II features.

NOTE: SATA II can contain more features but I think those are the basic ones.

A lot of those SATA II features are actually found on SATA 150 hard drives.

The WD Raptor is SATA 150 and has NCQ for instance.

So its not the case as some believe that

SATA 150 = SATA I
SATA 3.0 Gbps = SATA II

As near as I can determine the standards define the sets of possible features and the manufactures deside which ones to throw into a product.

Yeah I *think* I outlined official specs, but HDD companies can do whatever the hell they feel like, whatever rubs their buddah lol 8O

BTW Seagate is a good choice, especially with the 5 year waranties, but are you sure 80 Gb is enough?

Seagate SATA drives at newegg

Out of curiosity, what's the benefit/point of staggered drive spin up? This is the first I've heard of it...

Its more of a big deal when people have 4 and 5 hard drives in a system that all draw power at once when the system powers on. Whether its worth its salt is a whole nother question, but thats the basic idea underpinning it.