New computer wanting to piggy back old drive

I just got a new computer and want to piggy back the old drive in the new computer. this is the new mobo that I have Asus A8M2N-LA which has a SATA 300GB main HD. I want to Use the IDE 1 slot to put in an older drive that runs off of IDE cable. I looked in the BIOS and it has the IDE 1 and IDE 2 cables as the primary 0 and 1 slots and secondary 0 and 1 slots. the older drive does have windows xp on it but i would rather use the newer 300 GB HD as primary. But the SATA drives are third fourth and fith and sixth drives. how can I keep my old drive and just insert that drive into the new computer? what settings do i need to have set?

OR is there out there a program that would allow me to transfer my files to where they will still RUN like photoshop and word and office?

Thanks

MTG

I would connect it with an external USB box. They cost about $35. If all goes well, it will be assigned a drive letter and that's it.

I have never heard of it and where would I get one?

you could just add the drive as slave and take the files that you need off.. after installing all the porgrams on to your new hd you can take the setting form the old drive and replace the new installed ones..

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... u=V13-1006
There is one of those boxes.You can try what cowkiller said but I think the external mount is a lot easier.

Thanks I think I will try the box. because I tried to make the drive a slave already and the computer crashed because the IDE is primary and secondary and when i placed it as master and then another one as slave it got into a boot cycle and no further. then when I tried just a slave then it crashed and would not boot at all it said system failure.

That's exactly what I thought would happen.

Did you set up the drives to be slave and master? On the back of the drives you'll see little pins and a plastic piece that covers two pins, they will have three choices Cable Select, Master, and Slave. Use small pliers to change the settings by placing the small plastic piece over the correct configuration for each drive. Remeber both cannot be master. It also sounds like you may have your IDE cables mixed, the one with the blue is the primary and is for the master.

Yes I am familar with the pin settings on the drives and yes I did set the pins to two configurations. one bieng that one was slave an one was master. and the second was with both being slave to the already installed HD and nether worked.