A few questions from a relative novice if you can bear with me !
Oh, and Hi ! 1st post !
My IDE hard drive (20Gb) is slowly dying a death and I have the opportunity of getting my hands on a newer, fitter 160Gb SATA drive. I know you can get an adaptor to fit IDE into SATA but can you use it the other way round / would there be major compatibility issues ?? I'm thinking I plug the 'IDE' side into mobo and connect from there as no SATA conns on board.
I back up my personal files on a regular basis so I'm safe on that score but what about my windows set up ?
Is it possible to burn a dvd of my windows set up and just load that up when the new drive is fitted ? I'm thinking I just copy drive 'C:', what else would I need ? As a euphimism, I'm thinking it's like pouring water from a dirty glass into a clean glass and everything will be Hunky Dory.
The reason I ask is that I have done a lot of tweaking in the registry and the operating system and it is now just right for me. It would be a lot easier to be able to load Elmers XP Home rather than Windows XP Home version (I have my M$ disk, just in case, but had problems before re~validating after a re~install) or is it not not going to be as simplec as I imagine?
Although the PC the drive is being donated from is "broke" I'm hoping to get my hands on the whole kaboodle and with a bit of luck. be able to get it up and running again which will just leave part 2 of my problem. The disk does work but it has been wiped clean hence the desire to do a straight software swap.
Hoping someone can help, and please, not tooo technical !!

Recipient:~ Packard Bell iMedia 4716 (Seagate HD)
Donor Part:~ Seagate HD from an Elonex (??) desktop.l