New PC: How to use old IDE HDD

[vikramk]

I am thinking of going in for a new PC but would like to use my old HDD (IDE) (lots of data on it) in it as well as two DVD drives. Given that most new motherboards have only one IDE cable (2 devices), I could only think of the following solution.

Connect my current HDD and DVD drive on the IDE cable
Connect a new SATA HDD and a SATA DVD drive to the SATA cables.

Will this work? Do you get SATA DVD drives in Mumbai? Which brand? What cost?

Is there any other solution? Is there a Core 2 Duo motherboard with 2 IDE cables?

If this is not possible, I was thinking of getting a HDD casing and converting my old HDD into an external drive with a USB connection. My experience with home-made (so to say) external drives has not been happy, however. I have a 40 GB external HDD but whenever I try to transfer a large file (say 3-4 GB) it hangs.

Would be glad for any help / suggestions.

Vikram

[sakumar79]

You can get a pci card for about 1 to 1.5k that will have ide connection... Through this you can connect the harddisk... But not sure how good the solution would be in terms of reliability, data transfer speed, etc...

Arun