I need to make a sig of my spec, but yes, it is in a tower case.
Is there any worry about card life? I know these things don't last forever, but don't know how that compares with a hard drive.
Hi!
In a Tower then really, the best option is a nice new HDD, you can use SATA with converter or a new IDE if you can find one for the best results.
CF Cards as we know have limited writes, if this is a workhorse system you may come into trouble eventually with this (i have some old CF's that were punished in Camera's before Amiga use and they are failing now but my new CF's are all fine however my Amiga's are only used a couple of hours a week.
If you just use it a few hours a week you can expect the CF to last

Another nice idea is that you can mount a CF in a removable bay on the front or rear of the case for simple back-ups/add data and to allow you to have several setups at your disposal on different CF's.
All the best,
Steve.