Will adding this old drive mess things up?

Can anyone answer this query?

Before I mess up a perfectly good working machine, I really need to know. I have a Seagate HD IDE 133 that was in my previous WinXP Pro machine with a whole bunch of files I would like to retrieve. It was the main "C" drive and has a recovery partition, an active boot sector, and XP still onboard. In the Vista machine I have my two HD's, one "C" and one "F"-Storage set up on SATA. This current mobo GIGABYTE 880GMA-UD2H has a 40pin Pirimary IDE connector in addition to the SATA so that is no problem. My question is, if I hookup the old IDE drive will it take over as a boot device in the BIOS and cause Vista not to boot?
My intent is to extract all the old files and then 'nuke' the drive with mbam, and use it for storage. Any input greatly appreciated.
Jakeman97

bump
I really need to know.

try it. just make sure that its slave i think?

also try to do some searching on google.

sorry, this is as much as i can give as i havent worked much with hard drives.

if something goes wrong with the bootloader, you can always try the fixmbr command which will fix the master boto sector if it has been corrupted: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx?mfr=true

or if its something wrong with the bootloader, you can use easy BCD: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

how to use easybcd: http://www.ehow.com/how_4900122_use-easybcd-windows-xp.html

Katokato said:

try it. just make sure that its slave i think?

also try to do some searching on google.

sorry, this is as much as i can give as i havent worked much with hard drives.

if something goes wrong with the bootloader, you can always try the fixmbr command which will fix the master boto sector if it has been corrupted: Microsoft Corporation

or if its something wrong with the bootloader, you can use easy BCD: Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies

how to use easybcd: How to Use EasyBCD in Windows XP | eHow.com

Click to expand...

Thank you katokato for the response and the links. Most helpful for sure. I know about the 'slave' setting and did that already. Google wasn't much help for this one. However, I did learn that when I bootup I have to sit on the 'delete' key, get into BIOS and make sure that old IDE drive wasn't picked up as the main boot drive, and if it was set the boot order accordingly. When I get this done I'll post a step by step in case it will help someone else.
Thanks again,
jakeman97