Problems with old Dell HD, IDE to USB drive cable

I have a bit of a fun bunch of hard drive swapping to do, and I want to know if everyone thinks this is a reasonable approach.

My mom’s old Dell Dimension 2400 had a hard drive problem thanks to a storm, and her XP install was damaged. In running the repair utility through Safe Mode, it froze again and now Safe Mode isn’t an option. Rather, The computer gets to the Windows screen and freezes as it tries to boot XP.

The hard drive is an old IDE that came with her Dell. I intend to loot the files on it onto my new computer, reformat her hard drive and install my old copy of XP onto it, then put her files back. To do this I bought an IDE to USB cable (my new comp is SATA).

The problem is that her Dell HD starts up with the cable, then is silent and the HD is never detected on the new comp as a USB external HD.
My question here is: is this because of the Dell starting XP and freezing? It seems likely, but I’ve never used one of these cables before so I don’t know how they usually react (are they normally just data or if they need to follow their plan and boot up their OS).

What should my plan of attack be? Would changing the jumper on the hard drive (unfortunately, this means removing it from a Dell, which is probably a pain in the neck) work? I want it to stop trying and failing to boot XP, so that it would work as just a storage HD and I can mine off all of the files.

Option 2) I also have the option of doing repair on an older computer I have with a failed video card (and hopefully I can a different AGP I once used for it) with IDE Hard Drives. I’ll have to empty and dump the slave after replacing the vid card, and probably physically move the Dell HD into the slave spot so that it doesn’t try and boot Windows. This sounds like it will be more neck pain, but it seems like it could be the only viable workaround.

I’d like to do this without involving the older computer as I’m not sure I actually have a vid card for it that will work.

 

I am not sure what kind of IDE to USB cable you have. Is it this kind this kind of adapter? Some of the very old drives do not work with this adapter. It is possible the hard drive is damaged. If you have an USB external or flash drive you could replace the drive in the computer and boot to a Puppy linux CD and then transfer the files. I like to use Imgburn to burn the iso.

http://help.artaro.eu/index.php/windows-xp/troubleshooting-xp/recover-files-from-hard-disk-xp.html

I have never attempted this but you could try booting Puppy on your computer and see if it detects the USB adapter and drive. I am not too confident about that though.