Sorry if this is too dumb...My machine has a WD 320G SATA HD and Win XP on it, as factory stock. What I am wondering is whether or not I could install older IDE WD drives one at a time temporarily (one 40G and one 80G) just to use "Darik's Boot'N Nuke" to wipe the drives before I give them away. I know that the connector to the HD for IDE must be different from a connector for SATA. Is there an adapter or some work around? "Boot 'N Nuke seems to boot up itself using linux somehow, and oes to work overwriting the whole "drive C:" Thanks

If you have an IDE connection to use you can do that. You might want to try Killdisk instead. Supposedly wipes to Dept of Defense standards. http://www.killdisk.com/

There are USB to IDE adapters, I believe they would work for what you want to do. Look around on the web for one of those external IDE drive kits which use USB. Make sure you check the specifications before you buy, some of them are only for the small laptop IDE drives.

Hmmm...well I opened the case yesterday to install a SCSI card for my slide scanner. Looking around at the HD drive connector it is different from the ones I have seen before. This is the first machien I have tah has a SATA HD. So looks like I can use a IDE to SATA adapter from newegg and just unplug the connectors from the SATA HD and plug into the adapter which has been plugged in to the IDE HD. Only question is where to get power for the IDE HD and the adapter. Gusee I'll have to wait until the adapter shows up to figure that one out.