The big problem I had at first was due to having 3 operating systems on three different drives, resulting in the PC at start-up randomly using different drives. these being Vista Basic, Xp-Pro, or in fact Vista Ultimate. It took me a while to find out how to make the PC always choose my "C" drive.
Now it runs perfectly using my Sata drives in a Raid level 1 so back-up of my photos is automatic.
As I'm a little tight for room I bought a large tower which will take 2 Ide drives and 4 sata drives, so I think I'm now covered for the future.
The big problem for me is a combination of old age and newer technology, the two are not really compatible, well at least in my case.