Jason,
Since you have a pair of old drives, then lets stop messing around, get a Western Digital WD800JB Hard Drive and do a fresh install of WinME. (Norton Ghost is another option if you do not want to do a fresh install.)
Windows is all about Disk Access, and the faster the drive, the better the performance of Windows.
Take Care,
Richard
P.S. I just went back to your original post which had your specs listed. If you wanted, you could easily upgrade to WinXP if you install the WD800JB.