OK, here's the thing: I have a hard drive with WinXP on it. All my programs, etc, are on it. But, since my motherboard died on me, the drive is currently useless. My job requires me to have a computer, so I got a replacement for now (laptop). Now, my friend tells me that the hard drive from my old computer (which he built in Dec. 2004), has a different connectivity than today's computers (serial? vs whatever mine is). Question(s): is there any way to run this hard drive from a USB enclosure setup? Is it even practical? Powerful enough to run right/fast? Or, can I get my OS and files, programs, etc, transferred from this drive to a new drive within a newer system? And can I expect the new drive to work like I've known my older one to? Thanks for any advice in advance. Oh, yeah. If there is no feasible way to utilize this drive as I'd like, I assume I could (if it's likely) get a USB enclosure and use it as a 120 Gig storage? Thanks again, ARPhot.

They make external cases that will convert the IDE to a USB, I would look for one that has its own external power supply so it won't be dependent on the USB for power.

There is one problem that you may have when you connect the IDE, since you have a SATA hdd in there now you can't connect the IDE drive as a slave and this could be a real problem. The IDE drive has recognized the chip set of the other motherboard and when it sees the new chip set it can confuse the OS, it could even be fatal to the OS. If you have access to another computer that you can install the hdd in as a slave do that and transfer or back up the files that you want to keep. After that I would wipe the drive, format and partition it and then use it as an external storage drive.

thank you for your response

You can boot Windows XP from a USB drive - but it's way, way too hard to do except as an exercise to prove that it can be done. You'll also be limited by the USB speeds that the ports and the enclosure are capable of supporting. All in all, not a very good idea IMO.

You can recover the data from the other drive in the same manner - just by copying it over to the new system. Be careful what you bring over, and realize that there may be access issues. You'll have to take ownership of the old files in the new computer in order to use them. Here's a link on how to do this: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic42756.html

Once you've recovered your data off of the hard drive, just format it so you can use it as a storage drive and leave it in the USB enclosure.