Windows Storage Server 2003 is a dedicated file and print server that has all functionality unrelated to file serving removed, increasing reliability and lowering the overhead on the device CPU. Built-in hardware redundancies are included in most solutions to provide a fully redundant architecture.
Windows XP is a desktop operating system. There is no comparison as it is not a server OS.
A rack optimized server is designed to fit in a rack.
A tower server is designed to fit small/midsized locations or locations with users spread out across a WAN. The best analogy here would be servers at an organization with 50-100 users and unable to take advantage of server consolidation due to a dearth of high-speed data lines.
Scalable servers are designed to be highly interconnected and provide massive redundancy for enterprise-wide, no failure allowed, applications.
An entire discussion of SATA vs ATA is here:
http://www.bigbruin.com/techtip.php?file=008