External HDD transfer process

[PanchoVilla]

The 120gb IDE hard drive on my shuttle is filling up, and I want to buy an external USB solution. But actually, I'd also like to replace the existing 120G Hitachi drive with a larger samsung spinpoint one (250-400GB) because the spinpoints are renowned to be quieter.

I was thinking therefore, of doing the following:

1 - get ICYBOX caddy
2 - get SAMSUNG IDE drive
3 - replace the hitachi drive in my shuttle with the samsung
4 - use the hitachi in the icybox.
5 - install linux on the new samsung

I intend to clean format the hitachi drive after I've transferred the data onto my samsung.

The thing is, will I be able to access the data on the hitachi drive simply by putting it into the icybox considering it currently has WinXP installed (ie it is not a simple formatted data drive) ?

Also, I'm choosing the icybox as it is the one being recommended here - but does is it fanless?

Many thanks.

 

[PanchoVilla]

I have a SN45G shuttle and looking at the specs it seems that I can put in a SATA drive:

spec check

Will I need to get an extra cable or something for my shuttle to connect to the sata drive?

(or does it use the same hdd cable?)