Will there be any difference in rendering speed if the "C" drive is ATA-100 or ATA-133? Or SATA?
Has anyone done any recent research on the effect of file allocation on the hardrives in respect to rendering speed and which is faster?
The C drive shouldn't be involved in the rendering process. If your source files or rendered files are residing on the system drive then you have vastly bigger speed issues to worry about than the hard drive speed. Ideally you should have at least two more drives: one for source files and one to hold the rendered output. The system drive tends to be busy with operating system activity all the time, so using this drive for media files will result in slower access and longer renders.
I would guess that drive speed is a very small factor. The biggest factors, from what people are saying here, are processor and memory speeds, in that order.
As for file allocation sizes, I'm not sure I understand what you mean, but in any case, why not try a couple of values with the "RenderTest" and then report the results?
Given that video involves large file sizes there should be a small advantage in using a larger cluster size. This wastes more disk space but makes things more efficient by reducing fragmentation.
However having one drive for source and one for destination can also be a help, but if the render involves lots of FXs then CPU speed will have a bigger impact.
Bob.