[Ja Ja]

I have a new SATA HDD, bigger, faster etc. I intend to fit this as the main HD and reinstall Win7 onto it.

Now I don't want to use my old ATA133 HDD as the booting drive as it is used as at present. If after installing Win7 onto the new drive, can I just plug the old one back in and access all the personal files on it? as if I just plugged in a USB data stick for example.

My aim would be to just delete what I don't need from the old one and kepe it for photo storage etc.

I don't want to go through the hassle of backing up everything to then put it back.

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By plug in I assume you want to plug it in to the main board and use as a slave drive.
That you can do.
You can access all the data. I would probably delete the windows folder that would exist on it.
That would give you more room.

I would suggest that you save what you want to the sata drive, format the ata drive, and move your data back.
That would give you a fresh drive to use for data.

[123Runner]

By plug in I assume you want to plug it in to the main board and use as a slave drive.
That you can do.
You can access all the data. I would probably delete the windows folder that would exist on it.
That would give you more room.

I would suggest that you save what you want to the sata drive, format the ata drive, and move your data back.
That would give you a fresh drive to use for data.

[Ja Ja]

oh yes plug it back into the mobo again, just leave it out of the reinstall to not complicate matters.

yeah I was going to delete windows off it for its use as a slave/second drive

Yes sounds good idea to move and reformat once all up and running. 7 years of god knows whats on there! but still chugging along without error but felt time to boost my new system as I'm sure this old HDD is the main bottle neck now.

[123Runner]

just leave it out of the reinstall to not complicate matters

That is definitely a great idea. We actually suggest to detach all externals so there is no confusion.