Data transfer to new drive

I am upgrading a computer, which includes a new hard drive and I need to get some of the data off the old drive onto the new one. The old drive is IDE, the new one SATA. The new motherboard has two SATA connectors and one IDE connector. I will also be installing a DVD rewriter, which is SATA (so this will take the other SATA connector), and a DVD ROM, which is IDE.

I've never installed SATA drives before, so I'm looking at the best way to do this. In the olden days when there was only IDE, I would have set up the new drive, installed the old one as slave, transferred the data and then formatted it and used it as a backup drive. As you can't set up a slave to a SATA drive, is the best way to do this to set it up as a slave to the new DVD ROM, or can it be set as master?

Until the data has been taken off it, it will still have an operating system on it - XP Pro. It is 40GB in one C: partition. I will be installing XP Pro on the new drive also. Will the system try to boot to this old drive if it is installed internally? Would the better alternative be to get an external enclosure for the old drive and transfer the data via USB or LAN?

Thanks.

 

i would set up the new drives before connecting the ide drive.
when the sata master is setup and loaded with windows, shut down and connect the ide. the sata will boot, to windows. leave jumper off ide drive.
get the info transfered, then disconnect it and do the dvd thiing

 

Read your motherboard manual thoroughly as setting up SATA boot is different from IDE.

You may experience conflict problems between the SATA and IDE if you have an operating sytem on each so connect your old IDE drive a slave, when you want to take the data off.
Once again read the manual carefully - it's in the BIOS settings.

 

Thanks for the replies, very helpful.

 

Make sure your SATA is the master as it is faster and thus best to put the OS on there IMO.

 

Primary drive selection can be found in the bios. It will let you pick which hardrive to boot from.

 

Thanks for the further input.

It is intended that the SATA drive will be the master with the OS installed. Due to the limitations of my sister's setup (desktop case in a very confined space) I have decided not to install the old IDE drive internally, but to get an enclosure and she can use it as an external backup drive.

I have already taken off the data she needs onto an external hard drive of mine, so I can just transfer that over when everything is up and running.