Hi, 2DobeMom, and welcome to HWC.
I assume this is a desktop, and not a laptop? Let me know if I am wrong.
If the processor is a PII, it is probable that your BIOS may have some limitations on how big a drive you can handle. However, I doubt that there are special requirements, other than it being an IDE drive. You may have to use something called a drive overlay for the machine to be able to use the whole drive. Or, in the alternative, you can install an IDE controller card and bypass that limitation that way.
How much storage space are you looking for?
The new IDE hard drives tend to have fairly long warranties-3-5 years. Folks here like Seagate, I have a few Samsung, etc.
And what operating system do you intend to use?