What steps must I take to add a IDE hard drive (from an older computer to a more recent e-machine) to a SATA port in the newer machine.
I have seen SATA to IDE two way converter boards which then can be connected to SATA ports via a SATA cable. Would this work and are there any more steps to take to make this work (such as bios changes and the like)

louharv1, August 2009

You can get little things that plug onto the back of the IDE Drive that the SATA cable will plug into. Try Maplin. They cost about £15-20. Mine doesn't work too well, but maybe I was unlucky. You also have to adapt the power supply cable.
You can also buy an "External IDE enclosure" which is a box that the IDE drive goes into and connects with USB. This gives you the equivalent of the external drives that you can buy. That costs a little more.
If you just need to get the data out, you can connect it to the IDE cable that your CD or DVD drive is connected to, as most computers still use IDE for that. You need to disconnect the CD or whatever or make sure there is no conflict with the master/slave setting.
There is generally no need to install any drivers.

ElectricHippy, September 2009

Most of these units should be seamless on newer hardware. My experience is that they just work; they simply convert the SATA signals to standard IDE signals and don't really have any configuration associated with them.

Brian, September 2009