Connecting old hard drive to new computer

A few days back, I posted a message looking for help regarding getting info.
off an old hard drive. Alias & Mike M. kindly suggested a way to go about
connecting the old hard drive to the new system. I'm ready to do that, but
I've hit a snag.

The old hard drive has a ribbon cable connecting it to the motherboard via a
second board. The new harddrive (in the new computer) doesn't have a ribbon
cable: it has a blue double wire connecting it directly to the mother board.

So, how do I go about connecting the old drive with the ribbon cable to the
new motherboard which doesn't appear to have a space for the ribbon cable? Do
I temporarily remove one of the other ribbon cables (for either the 3.5 or CD
drive)? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

One other thing: will there be a problem if my old system ran ME and my new
system runs XP?

Thanks in advance for all your help!

It sounds like the 'old' hard drive is IDE and uses the ribbon cable and the
'new' hard drive is SATA and uses the narrow cable.

For example, my motherboard came with six (6) connections for SATA devices,
two (2) connections for IDE devices, which supports two (2) IDE devices per
cable and connector for a total of four (4) IDE devices, and a connection
for a floppy drive(s), no more than two (2). (So I could have a total of
twelve (12) drives.)

You should be able to connect the 'old' drive to the same cable as the CD
drive. It is not compatible with the cable for the floppy drive. Most
instructions tell you to NOT connect a hard drive and a CD or DVD player to
the same cable as the hard drive will be slowed down by the slower speed of
the other device. On the IDE cable the item connected to the end of the
cable is considered to be the Master device and should be jumpered as such;
the device on the middle connector is the Slave and jumpered accordingly. If
you connect only one item either in the Master or Slave position then check
the harddrive's label because some manufacturer's have different jumper
selections for Master, Slave, and Single. Also, newer motherboards and
cables have color-coded connectors to make sure the cable itself is
correctly connected to the motherboad's connection.

All this information should be quite explicit in the manaul for your system
and/or the motherboard. And, remember, you will have to go into the BIOS
when the system boots to verify and confirm the BIOS has recognized the
devices as connected.

Have fun!!

"Really Frustrated!!!" wrote in
message ...
A few days back, I posted a message looking for help regarding getting
info.
off an old hard drive. Alias & Mike M. kindly suggested a way to go about
connecting the old hard drive to the new system. I'm ready to do that, but
I've hit a snag.

The old hard drive has a ribbon cable connecting it to the motherboard via
a
second board. The new harddrive (in the new computer) doesn't have a
ribbon
cable: it has a blue double wire connecting it directly to the mother
board.

So, how do I go about connecting the old drive with the ribbon cable to
the
new motherboard which doesn't appear to have a space for the ribbon cable?
Do
I temporarily remove one of the other ribbon cables (for either the 3.5 or
CD
drive)? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

One other thing: will there be a problem if my old system ran ME and my
new
system runs XP?

Thanks in advance for all your help!