Older IDE hard drive, newer SATA system
 

Hello all,

I'm attempting to connect an old Maxtor hard drive (model 84320D4) that came out of an old IBM clone platform running Windows 95, to a Dell Dimensions 4700 running WindowsXP. The purpose is probably obvious but I want to transfer some of the old files to the drive in the newer system.
As you might have guessed, I'm having difficulty due to SATA / IDE connection disparity between the 2 hard drives and old to new hardware platforms. The CD roms in the new system are using what appears to be an IDE style cable so I connected the old Maxtor to what I assumed was an IDE bus (the Maxtor's jumpers was configured to make it a slave). No luck, whatsoever.
Any suggestions? Can I make this work with existing connections? Is there a product for adapting/connecting the Maxtor externally?
Thank you in advance for any advice anyone might give.

Pallie44

On the back of the cdrom drives, what is the jumper set to? Most Dells use the Cable select jumper and unless you change that to Master, the computer won't read your slave setting on the old drive.

And yes, there are harddrive enclosures you can buy to place your old drive in and use it externally (if the drive is good). These hook up via USB.

Hello, photolady,

Thank you for the advice and direction. Do to the configuration of the IDE cable connected to the CDROMs, I completely disconnected the cable from the other CD drives and connected it to the desired old drive. I had the old drive set to slave concerned I would have a conflict with the computer's SATA drive. If I set this to master, will it cause a conflict with the SATA drive? My assumption is it won't because it's a different bus but I guess I'll find out if the system doesn't boot. Thank you again!
Regards,
Pallie44

No it won't cause a conflict set as Master on the IDE controller/cable. And the reason it wasn't working is because you disconnected the cdrom and left the IDE drive as slave. Since there was no Master, you confused the computer.