can you boot ide hdd to sata adapter

[JustinAK]

i want to update an old tower and i have a 500gb ide hard drive and a 40gb ide hard drive with xp. my problem is that the newer inexpensive mb have only sata on them and i was wondering if an adapter would be bootable so i can use my ide drives at first tell i can afford sata drives. ive found bidirectional and some pci adapters. the bidirectional are cheaper. what do you think?

 

[treefrog07]

An adapter converting your EIDE HDDs to SATA will boot; you will be using the SATA connectors from the adapters to the motherboard. The motherboard won't know the HDDs are really EIDE. Here are some at newegg. Please read the reviews. Of course you can use another vendor if you choose.

 

[JustinAK]

An adapter converting your EIDE HDDs to SATA will boot; you will be using the SATA connectors from the adapters to the motherboard. The motherboard won't know the HDDs are really EIDE. Here are some at newegg. Please read the reviews. Of course you can use another vendor if you choose.

nice thank you i can update my tower sooner and for less $. just to be sure can i use my xp os (40gb hd) or will i have to reinstall or is it one of those things that might work or might not?

 

[JustinAK]

Best answer selected by JustinAK.

 

[treefrog07]

nice thank you i can update my tower sooner and for less $. just to be sure can i use my xp os (40gb hd) or will i have to reinstall or is it one of those things that might work or might not?

You're welcome. Since you are changing motherboards you will likely have to do a clean install of XP. You can try just using the old HDD, but the new motherboard's drivers are different, and since your current XP doesn't have them, it may not be able to start.