I don't know quite how far it goes, but the controller cards we use in our products all speak both SATA and SAS.? So the drives border on interchangable.? There are differences in the command messaging and in the drive characteristics, but it's pretty easy to support both. As to the question of SATA vs IDE, I agree with your concerns over forced obsolescence.? But as far as classic machines go, I'm more concerned by the dearth of 50-pin SCSI I drives, and I haven't had very good luck with using adapters to put newer drives on older machines. As to FC, I will have to admit to a bit of bias. Competing with FC pays the bills.? But even with that bias, for communicating between a host and a storage shelf, I have a hard time imagining a good reason to do anything other than a light weight storage protocol directly over Ethernet. (And to avoid any confusion, my definition of light weight does not include FCoE or iSCSI.) BLS