Old IDE into P5Q SE?

My old system soon to be redundant runs a 13G IDE drive off an Asus P2B mobo.

I just had this thought - could I connect this drive to the IDE connector on my new Asus P5Q mobo and therefore have access to everything on the drive?

Why ? well it saves me backing everything up to move files over.

If connector compatible - my only unknown is whether XP would understand the format on the old hd, but hopefully one of you experts might know :)

If not format compatible - and therefore not appropriate to instal for copying old files over - what about the ability to just reformat it after removing wanted stuff?

If all thats a 2x nono, I will connect it to our router and just copy stuff over, but I thought the above was interesting.

Alan.

PS forgot to mention old pc running W98.

I'm guessing that you should just be able to plug it into the IDE port and then it should turn up. If its windows 98, I guess that means its FAT32 file system (?) and that should be okay for XP to pick up.

Not sure if there would be an issue because its an old boot drive, but even then you might just have to select XP instead of 98 in a boot menu at startup.

Worst case (and I cant see this happening) is to get a cheap IDE caddy and plug it into a USB port or something...

The connector should work fine on the P5Q. As well as the filesystem since u most likely have a FAT32 drive.

Thanks peeps - I guess thats what I'll try, will certainly make life just that little bit easier, save me the big job of moving everything at once - be able to copy over at my leisure. Then after, theres the possibility I can deploy it for backups.

Now just got to steel my nerves to take all this lovely new kit out of its bags and assemble it into something resembling a sparkling new PC - 1st time for me.

Thanks,
Alan.