whats difference between SATA/PATA/IDE(EIDE) & which is the best?

IDE/PATA drives are the older type HD's that connect to the MB with a wide ribbon (about 2 inches). Sata drives are the newer ones that connect with a small cable ribbon about a half an inch and is a lot faster.

PATA vs. SATA

Both SATA and PATA are IDE types. The type of hard drive used depends on which one(s) are supported by your motherboard. SATA is currently the fastest IDE interface. PATA, also known as ATA is slower than SATA. EIDE, also known as Enhanced-IDE, is an obsolete proprietary IDE interface created by Western Digital. If you have the choice of which to use, go for SATA since it has higher speeds, reduces the need to worry about jumpers, and allows for hot swapping.

IDE - this is a harddrive connection type, not a type of harddrive.
It's an ATA specification (the terms are often used interchangable).

PATA - Parallel ATA - old technology, being phased out.
Uses a ribbon cable, which restricts air flow in your computer

SATA - Serial ATA - newer technology.
Capable of faster data transfer, than PATA.
Uses smaller cables, which promote better air flow through your computer

There are 2 flavors of SATA:
1.5Gb/s - first generation
Barely faster than parallel ATA/133 devices
Capable of 1.5Gb/s transfer rate
Also known as SATA I

3Gb/s - second generation
Capable of 3Gb/s transfer rate
Also known as SATA II
The best currently available, unless your willing to spend the BIG bucks, for a solid state drive.

thx for info guys really clears that up..now my next question is..I have maxtor 6Y160M0 in my dell DT & I downloaded Seatools just to run tests on it for the heck of it & the short/long DST tests said it failed ..yet I ran the onboard diag that came w/ my DT and it passed those..i also ran CHDSK which found nothing run yet the seatools S/L DST tests come back as failed?..

FWIW I have had drives pass the test and be bad and fail the test and work for years. Your best bet would be to keep backups of your important files and run it till the wheels fall off. Also be ware that even though SATA 3.0 is backwards compatible some SATA controllers have problems with the newer technology.

Excerpt from Wikipedia
According to the hard drive manufacturer Maxtor, motherboard host controllers using the VIA and SIS chipsets VT8237, VT8237R, VT6420, VT6421L, SIS760, SIS964 found on the ECS 755-A2 manufactured in 2003, do not support SATA 3 Gbit/s drives. To address interoperability problems, the largest hard drive manufacturer, Seagate/Maxtor, has added a user-accessible jumper-switch known as the Force 150, to switch between 150 MB/s and 300 MB/s operation.^[5] Users with a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s motherboard with one of the listed chipsets should either buy an ordinary SATA 1.5 Gbit/s hard disk, buy a SATA 3 Gbit/s hard disk with the user-accessible jumper, or buy a PCI or PCI-E card to add full SATA 3 Gbit/s capability and compatibility. Western Digital uses a jumper setting called "OPT1 Enabled" to force 150 MB/s data transfer speed. OPT1 is used by putting the jumper on pins 5 & 6.<sup>[17]

Credit: Wikipedia</sup>

Backup often, platter-based hard drives are warrantied for 3 or 5 years. After that time period, the failure rate goes up. The average age for my hard drives is about six years. Solid state drives will last longer since there are no moving parts to wear out.

thx sneaky..does anyone recommend or have a FREE hd test utility (except seatools)?

FWIW: IMO, SeaTools for Dos is the best utility for a Seagate/Maxtor drive. It's my belief that no one makes a better, free diagnostic for hard drives...than the manufacturer. When attempting to do an RMA, running the manufacturer's diagnostic is preliminary to requesting an RMA and is considered conclusive evidence (by the manufacturer) of the drive's fitness.

"SeaTools for DOS has replaced SeaTools Desktop and PowerMax. SeaTools for DOS can test Seagate or Maxtor Parallel ATA (PATA and IDE) and Serial ATA (SATA) interface disc drives. Because the software boots to its own operating system you can test your drive regardless of the OS installed on it. You can even test a new or completely blank drive. SeaTools for DOS will instruct the drive to run its built in Drive Self Test (DST) and give either a pass or fail status. If you are troubleshooting your disc drive and the DST passes, then you have a good drive!"

But, as Sneakycyber stated...there are exceptions to such troubleshooting efforts...in the world of computing.

Louis