SATA or IDE, when both seak at 8.5 ms but ahve 25% dif. in price?

I'm about to get a new hardrive and I'm not sure whether to get IDE or SATA drive. What are the benefits of a SATA drive? I found a couple of posts here, and I see people get happy when they don't use IDE drives - why? Is it just to "save space"? I was comparing almost identical 120 GB Seagate drives, one IDE and one SATA, and they both hade the same 8.5 seak time.

Does it mean that SATA does not make the system faster at all?

well when I switched from IDe to Sata and then again when I was using IDE because of a mobo death for 3 months, I noticed that sata just feels faster.

The SATA can move more data, they are rated up to 150 MB/sec (ATA150) where as IDE drives are usually ATA100 or at most ATA133 (although they never reach 133 MB/sec data transfer rates in reality). So even if the seek speed is the same, the SATA drives can still move more data. Think of it this way. You have a 4 lane highway with a speed limit of 60 MPH. Only so many cars can travel at that speed on the road at any given time. Let's say we add 2 more lanes. Even at the same 60 MPH speed limit, you can now move more traffic down the highway than before.

and sata cables dont block airflow the way ribbon cables do!

lol, you are also less likely to get transfer bottlenecks at burst speeds with SATA

Honestly, I don't notice any difference in performance between IDE and SATA (I use 2 of each in my system). But, SATA cables rule. They shame even the round IDE cables that I use.

Given the choice between the two I would choose SATA.

First of all, even though the actual performance difference between Parallel and Serial is negligible, SATA is the newer technology and offers only a price drawback in comparison to the Parallel drive.

Secondly, the cables are much easier to route, use less space, suffer less from crosstalk, and make airflow easier.

Simply for the better cables, and the fact SATA is the future (can keep the drive for next time you upgrade, perhaps when PATA is no longer included) I would choose the SATA drive.