Benifits of upgrading to a sata hard drive.

Right now im still running a 100 ATA hard drive. What would be the benefits of upgrading will i see a big increase in performance?

Yes. Not just in the interface but the drive improvements (increased areal density, seek times, throughput, etc).

The thing with IDE hard drives is not just the speed. When you use an IDE hard drive and typically have a IDE Optical Drive as well, you slow down the Optical drive if they are both on the same ribbon cable.

That being said, another setback of IDE drives is the ability to only run 2 - IDE drives.

Another limitation is that the current largest IDE drive is a 750GB 7200RPM Seagate Drive. If you are not fond of Seagate, then the next two biggest drives are WD 500, and Hitachi 500. A IDE drive is not really any cheaper than a Sata Drive and in all likely hood, when the stock runs out.... the stock runs out.

Another reason is the lack of RAID ability. (Not many do this to their personal computers, but it is always an option).

If you are looking to upgrade because your HDD died, or you need more capacity, then look at getting a SATA drive. There are even adapters if you don't have sata ports, as well as internal controller cards.

If your just looking to swap 1:1 then don't worry about it, there will be no real visible gain.

http://www.harddrivereport.com/pata_vs_ata_vs_sata_vs_ide.html

Late model ATA hard drives are still fulfilling most requirements. SATA hard drives are the next step up, ie - slightly better performance, and are the norm in most new machines. Finally, SATA II hard drives are the highest performing models. However, generally speaking unless you are running large, high demand programs or video games you most likely will not notice any advantage.

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IMO I think the advancements in drive technology will be noticable, even if the change of interface isn't - depending on the age of your ATA drive.

NB: Your PC will likely benefit more from a RAM increase first, though. I'd aim for 2 GB min. nowadays, ideally 4 GB.

+1 for the RAM upgrade.