Old EIDE drive to SATA connection for XPS 400...should it work?

Question

I have an old Western Digital Internal 250GB Hard Drive(Model #WD2500JBRTL).  I would like to add this drive as a secondary/slave drive.  There is data on this drive I would like to recover.  I have purchased a Serial ATA to IDE Converter and Power Y Cable to make the connections work.  I connected the converter to the old drive's IDE port.  I connected the SATA cable to the converter, and connected the other end to an open SATA port on the motherboard.  I also ran the power Y Cable from the converter and old drive power port to an open power plug for a second hard drive.  I have a sinking feeling I didn't do enough research before purchasing this converter.  Number one, the converter can't fit properly due to it sticks out beyond the the side cover. I realized a right angle would work better, assuming it would solve my problem.  Number two, even if the converter is suppose to work, a problem arises since I don't want to lose the data on the old drive.      My motherboard has four SATA ports, one in use for the master drive. There is an IDE port on the board, but in use for the 2 DVD drives. In my one attempt to boot, the old drive was not recognized, meaning I could not boot windows at all.  The Dell logo came up, but an error message came up.  Unfortunately, I did not write down or remember the message.  Once again, I have a sinking feeling it doesn't matter if I must format this old drive to work on my XPS 400.       If this converter is not the proper way to connect the old drive, is there one out there that will work?  Most important to me, is there any way to keep from losing data when setting this drive to work with my XPS 400? In some research I've done since purchasing this converter, I have seen there is a PCI card that adds another IDE port, allowing another hard drive.  Would this work?      Any help and/or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.   System info:  Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 2                        Dell XPS DXP051 Intel Pentium D CPU 3.20GHz                        3.25 GB RAM

njr999 · Answer

One possibility that would be fairly straightforward would be to buy an external hard drive enclosure that takes PATA drives and connects to the computer by a USB cable. These cases are quite inexpensive.

Timdrouilard · Answer

I second the idea of just installing the old IDE drive in an external USB enclosure. It's much simpler.   You're better off just buying a second SATA drive to install inside the 400, then transfer the data from the external IDE/USB drive to the new internal SATA drive.

jsprout73 · Answer

I wanted to thank you guys for your suggestions.  I took your advice and bought a hard drive enclosure from TigerDirect.com. It worked perfect.  I was able to retrieve the data I was after without having to format and/or partition.  I left the jumper settings on slave, and Windows XP found the drive and assigned it a letter automatically, just like any other USB device I have connected before, ie jump drive.   Thanks again, Jason

Storage, Drives & Media

Was this post helpful?