I’ve never needed high speed on my HDD’s, so IDE was always good enough. Are UATA drives backwards conpatible with IDE’s, or do they have totall different connectors and so its necessary to get new drives? 
Google is less than helpful as it just gives definitions and technical stuff.
I’d be surprised if you were not already at Ultra ATA speeds
Basically mixed bag of definitions causing mass confusion.
IDE & UATA in essance same thing end of day same IDE interface.
however with the upper modes 5/6/7 you need the 80 way ribbon cable
to minimise the crosstalk.
U = ultra normally defines a drive capable of running at DMA 3 or greater
speeds.
If you go to your device manager and right click the ide interface
goto the properties you might have something in there to indicate
what speed your drive is already running at.
It would have to be quite an old drive not to have at least DMA3.
cheers mate. all my stuff is 40 way ribbon so that should be ok with the SFF box from mackerel. (suddenly a cheap network box was looking pricey!) 
The box should handle any IDE drive without problem. BTW for higher speeds, you use the 80 way cables 
(included with box) Still 40 pin conectors before you get confused. The extra conductors provide extra screening to enable the higher speeds.
looks like all i need now is a kvm swith and some way of convicing 'er indoors its a woofer box and not a PC hehe