hello, this might be slightly off topic I am marking the off topic part of this email with <ot> and ending with <noot> because the OT part will be most interesting to people like JTD in particular. <ot> I have a 40 g ide hard disk and I am aware that there are USB to IDE converters available. my idea was to convert this IDE hard disk to an external USB hard disk. how viable is this? I know that the power would be a problem, correct me if I am wrong jtd. but USB pen drives and external hard disks are all powered from the USB port itself. please suggest me if this is possible. <noot> now on to the gnu/linux specifrics. if my above idea is viable, will my hard disk be sda or hda? how will it be mounted? and if I want to load a complete operating system like debian, will it be possible? regards. Krishnakant.