Connecting Old HDDs

[gropingmantis]

I have been duly tasked by my mother to see what is on the HDDs in the computers in our loft and then DBAN the suckers so we can get rid of them.

None of the computers will post, thats why they are in the loft, so I cannot just power them up see whats on them and run DBAN job done.

So instead I invested in an IDE to SATA converter (my current PC has no IDE connectors only SATA), it was nice and cheap.
But when I connect any of the HDDs to my motherboard the computer freezes at POST (it says that the HDD is connected but wont go any further).

I have tried unplugging everything else connected by SATA to the motherboard (HDD, SSD, optical drive) but still no dice, is there some sort of jumper setting that I need to do on the HDD for it to work?

The BIOS is set to Legacy IDE not AHCI or RAID.

Please help.

 

[CaptainCrash]

You might need to make sure the drives are specifically jumpered as master rather than cable select - there should be a small diagram on the drive casing, but the "master" setting usually bridges the two pins furthest from the power connector.

Having said that, these cheap adapters can be a bit hit-and-miss at the best of times, and if your mobo has decided it just doesn't like it, there's not much you can do (I guess you've already tried using different SATA ports). In that case, you may be better off buying a cheap USB enclosure (make sure it's for IDE drives, obviously), which should only set you back a tenner or so.