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Data recovery from old IDE hdd running xp onto a new dell mobo that only has SA

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Hi,

I just moved cross country (LA to NYC) with my computer. I faired the journey just fine, but the comp didn't make out so well =(. Upon getting to nyc, unpacking and trying to boot up the computer, I noticed nothing happened when I hit the on switch. I opened up the case to find that the cpu with fan attached and one of the hdd's had fallen from their original locations and had been jostling around crashing into other components in the case, even though I had packed it in it's original styrofoam and box. I have since bought a new computer (dell vostro 220; cheap and easily upgradable) because I needed it for work right away, but I would like to recover the info on those two old IDE hdd's from my old computer (as it contains my last 7 years worth of work and my graduate thesis, ie. things not worth anything to anyone, but me =). I opened up the Dell to find that it has no IDE connections (is this normal?!) to connect my old hdd's to. My questions are:

1.) Is it possible to connect the IDE hdd's with a PCI IDE (ATA 133) card onto the dell SATA only motherboard?

2.) If I got a PCI IDE card would I need a separate power supply in addition to the card to run the old hdd's?

3.) The old Hdd's ran XP, while my new dell runs vista. Can I retrieve the data off the old hdd's while I'm in vista or would I have to partition my dell hdd and install xp onto the partition?

I am sorry for the all the noob dummy questions, but I have not been able to find an answer to these questions after 2 hours of searching. Thanks in advance for any insight =0)!

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1.) What about buying one of those boxes that converts a hard drive into an external USB hard disk? That's sure to work, and would be useful afterwards. I can't see any reason why an ATA card wouldn't work (assuming the PC has PCI slots), but the only way to know for sure is to try it.

2.) You'll need Molex power connectors (those fairly large 4-pin ones). Have a look inside the Dell and see if there are any free ones. Again, not a problem if you use an external enclosure.

3.) Data shouldn't be a problem. You should be able to access the disks from Vista. However, be prepared for the fact that the disk that had been bouncing about may well be trashed.

Good luck!

I had a similar problem when I upgraded motherboards. However the os was the same. I bought a cheap rosewill IDE RAID card and was able to copy everything I wanted from the old drive(you don't have to use it in RAID mode). Then I bought another IDE hard drive and setup a mirrored array. I just used seagate disc wizard to clone the new hdd to the array. This way I have my new sata hdd plus two mirrored backup drives, for less than 25 dollars(had another IDE drive laying around). I had a lot of papers and other writings that are important if only to me, so I feel better knowing I have complete fault tolerance. The rosewill card came with drivers on floppy and cd, so you can install the drivers on your current os then use the old drive on the card from vista. good luck.

Lulu go to tigerdirect they sale a wire kit to go from sata to ide drive


lulu33 said:
Hi,

I just moved cross country (LA to NYC) with my computer. I faired the journey just fine, but the comp didn't make out so well =(. Upon getting to nyc, unpacking and trying to boot up the computer, I noticed nothing happened when I hit the on switch. I opened up the case to find that the cpu with fan attached and one of the hdd's had fallen from their original locations and had been jostling around crashing into other components in the case, even though I had packed it in it's original styrofoam and box. I have since bought a new computer (dell vostro 220; cheap and easily upgradable) because I needed it for work right away, but I would like to recover the info on those two old IDE hdd's from my old computer (as it contains my last 7 years worth of work and my graduate thesis, ie. things not worth anything to anyone, but me =). I opened up the Dell to find that it has no IDE connections (is this normal?!) to connect my old hdd's to. My questions are:

1.) Is it possible to connect the IDE hdd's with a PCI IDE (ATA 133) card onto the dell SATA only motherboard?

2.) If I got a PCI IDE card would I need a separate power supply in addition to the card to run the old hdd's?

3.) The old Hdd's ran XP, while my new dell runs vista. Can I retrieve the data off the old hdd's while I'm in vista or would I have to partition my dell hdd and install xp onto the partition?

I am sorry for the all the noob dummy questions, but I have not been able to find an answer to these questions after 2 hours of searching. Thanks in advance for any insight =0)!

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