PC guru's please!

I have 4 year old home built pc which has provision for IDE harddrives.Can I connect the newer SATA harddrives to me system? I want to have a serious bash at understanding Linux but rather than partition the existing drive as a dual boot, add another h/d for Linux only.

You will need to check if the motherboard has any SATA connections.

If not, you'll need some sort of PCI Sata Card.

Do you know what system/mother board was used ?

Alternatively what is the Model Number of your machine ?

Mark

do you have the correct socket on the motherboard

No lads,there is no sata slot on the mobo

So its either a pci card as Cobra mentioned or an ide h/d it would seem. I could upgrade but its no on my agenda at the mo :lol:

For the price, might as well get a cheap 40gb IDE hdd, or if you just want to play around with Linux, download a live CD, like the SUSE of Fedora KDE live CD's - they do not need to be installed on a hard drive, running directly off the CD instead.

Give us a PM if you need any help :lol:

Ask away - never a problem. :lol:

Remember that you can install linux in as little as 600mb (hence why you can run it off a CD), but the average install will run to about 1.5Gb with X-Windows etc, so you could just get an old 10Gb drive off e-bay for peanuts.

The other way is to look into the portable HDD units, providing your BIOS will allow you to boot from USB ...

If you are sticking with IDE then you can get removable hard disk caddies for a few quid, buy a pair and you can swap out the drive depending on whether you want to run Linux or Windows.

Save messing with boot managers and the like and at least you know you won't screw up your windows install while playing with Linux or viceversa

Better still, donate a couple of quid to FOG and I will post you a pair, as long as you have a spare CD Rom type drive bay in your PC case you should be good to go

confused now

Martin dude, I've a few spare 160GB kickin arond my desk. Ya welcome to one if ya want mate.

Mark