I am just about wrapping up building my new pc and i have a new 500gb hd. I now want to take the two hard drives from my old PC and get the files in there too (installing is the best way to do it bc the old pc won't even turn on. The new hd is SATA- good, I have 4 SATA on the mobo, but here is what I overlooked: I only have one IDE on the mobo and the two old hd's are IDE. One is a 300gb and the other a 60gb. I can live without 60gb extra storage, but I need those files! So here is my question... Can I take the old 60gb (which served as my primary drive with XP), install it in the IDE, transfer files over to the new 500gb, take the 60gb out, put the old 300gb IDE hd in, and then leave that one there as a slave permanently? Maybe this is a dumb question- I'm just extremely nervous about all of this. As always, insight from from the learned is very much appreciated.
Thanks -gs

one other way to do it is get a usb to hdd connector saves fiddling with the insides of pc,also they work with optical drives as well.
see if i can find a link for said unit

IDE/SATA to USB 2.0 Hard Drive Adapter at Gizoo - 24k -

there you go have a look at this page,you might want to shop around as prices vary

IDE drive to USB 2.0 sounds like an option but I'll bet your HD data transfer will be limited to the 400mb USB 2.0 limit My transfer speeds are 1/3 slower than IDE when using my USB external drive.
If you built your PC, you probably don't mind getting inside so your option of adding the ide drives one at a time seems plausible to me.
When you are done, just leave the 300gb on that ide port as an extra drive for image or data backups. IDE to SATA data transfer times will definitely be faster than USB 2.0 to IDE speeds.

Yeah, thanks, I just wasn't sure if I was overlooking something. Like turning the PC on after putting the 300gb and realizing "oh no, I should have (insert obvious thing here)." The actual installation is very easy with my case so that is no problem. Actually, here's a question, do I even need to set a jumper in the IDE drive to work as a slave for the SATA?

Hello and welcome to PC Help Forum.

Well you buy 1 double IDE lead wich will connect 2 IDE hard drives internaly.It is one grey flat lead with 3 connections on it.One for MB and the other two for HDDs.Do you have enough power connections to power the HDDs?You can buy power supply splitters.

You would have to set little plastic jumpers on IDE HDDs to slave.

If you want more information on how to fit a slave drive we will help you.