2 hard drives, Wipe out

hey there, i recently bought a new hard drive, and it is a SATA, but my old one is IDE.... now my question is, once i get them both hooked up and running properly(by the way if you know how, you are welcome to explain it to me) is there a way to wipe out the IDE hard drive so that it is empty?? do i need to buy/get software? how do i partition them?
thanx

So you're going to have 2 hard drives. 1 ATA and 1 SATA. Are you going to do a complete re-install of your o/s? If so, then you'd put your o/s on your SATA and use your ATA for backup or whatever. In this situation you won't need any partitioning software as o/s installs do this. If on the other hand you're not going to re-install your o/s then you'll probably need some partitioning software. The problem is that your o/s will not see the hard drive unless it's partioned into the correct file format fat, fat32, ntfs, ext, etc. If you're using windows 9x then they come with fdisk although it can be quite complicated. Later versions don't include it. I use partition magic and have never had any problems although i know some people hate it.
The simplest way if you're not comfurtable with fdisk or don't have any partioning software is to back-up your data, format both hard drives and then install you o/s onto your SATA drive.
Hope this helps, and post again if you need more help.
Rizla

sorry but that really confused me..... i am more or less building a new computer, but using certain parts from my old one (HD, Fans, Modem....) on my old computer i have win 98, but on this one when i get it done, i want win xp..... i was told by a friend that i have to install win xp onto the SATA first before i can even install the ATA HD..... there are some files i want to get off there, and then i want to wipe it out.... Can i wipe out the hard drive without any software?? or do i need to get some..... and you said that the OS will partition it for me? will it actually do that?

Sorry to be confusing, i didn't really know exactly what you were trying to acheive.
Firstly, you can install the ATA anytime, dunno what your mate was on about!
What i'd do is this:
Install (physically) your SATA drive. It's just a power connector and an SATA lead (usually red). Check the jumper settings making sure that the SATA drive is set to master. I'm assuming that you haven't disconnected your old hard drive.
Insert the xp cd and boot onto the cd. As your computer was booting, before it looked in the cd drive, the bios should've detected your new hd.
Install xp onto the new hd formatting to type ntfs.
Once installed, copy all your files needed from your old hd to your new hd. Then open a command prompt by clicking on the start button, click run and type cmd. At the command prompt type format d: where d is your old hard drive letter. Make sure you get the letter right! Although it won't let you format the drive which contains the copy of windows your running, it's always worth the extra check!
And Voila, you should have a new SATA hd with xp installed and a clean ATA drive with all your files backed up.
Hope that helps, any problems get back to me.
Rizla