For a recently "inherited" Dell Dimension 8110 (win XP home Edition SP2) I bought a rosewill (rx35mv) enclosure for a samsung sp0802n HDD (it previously was the slave HD behind a Seagate baracuda 80G HD on an older system that was fast corrupting itself on Windows XP pro sp2).

The enclosure appeared to be the best way to access the HD from the previous computer as the Dell has a Western Digital 800BB, did have a bay for a second HD and a single connector 40 pin cable only. There is data only on the Samsumg (music, jpgs, docs/xls, pdf, and the like) so I cannot reformat it. The dell could recognize the Seagate HD, but started to boot using that disc. It once recognized the Samsung HD and wanted to reformat it. Now it does not recognized the samsung HD in th rosewill enclosure.

Does being a slave in the old system cause problems when trying to access it in the new system?

The WD HDD has a 10 pin jumper - the seagate and samsung have an 8 pin jumper - issues - or pin settings?

Can the 40 pin cable with only one connecter in the Dell be replaced with a dual connector and everything jumpered for cable select????

Are these HDD interfaces compatible? Samsung = PATA - - WD = Ultra ATA and seagate = SATA - or is that just a stupid question?

Or ---- help?????

Bill

There should be no issues using PATA and SATA in the same system.
Number of jumper pins makes no differece.
You can replace the single connector with a dual connector cable with no problems. You can either do it Master/Slave or CS should work as well.