The data connectors on SATA drives are similar to the connectors for EIDE drives, but are shorter, narrower, and with closer spaced pins. I don't recall whether the number of pins is exactly the same, but since you can't plug one kind into the mate for the other kind it's sort of academic. The power connectors are also a bit different.

Most of the USB boxes I've been able to get accept EIDE drives ONLY.

Other boxes accept SATA drives ONLY.

I do have a couple that accept either EIDE or SATA drives inside, with the same USB cable on the outside, but they've been hard to find in my area and are a "significant small bit" more expensive than either of the single-kind kind.

Since the connectors on the two HD types are different, if you don't have an obvous pair of connectors in the box that fits the drive you have, then you have a box for the other kind of drive. (or so it would appear)

***

You should be able to insert any setup CD/DVD without it taking off without permission if you hold down the shift key while you insert it (and for a couple of seconds after). This is supposed to lock out any autorun command on the disk. (Some time back, it took me a while to figure out that a Gateway computer had a setup disk that did nothing, and the actual WinXP Installation disk was labelled "Drivers." There's apparently a lot of different disguises from different OEMs.)

For WinXP, it would be expected that the install program would ask if you want a FAT32 drive formatted as NTFS or left as FAT32 in any case; but especially if you manually launch the installation.

NTFS is preferable from a performance standpoint, and WinXP - at least in early versions - CANNOT FORMAT A FAT32 disk/partition of the size(s) you have, so if you allow the install program to re-format using FAT32 you'll likely lose access to most of the drive.

If you want to clean the disk and start fresh, WinXP can format NTFS of any reasonable/conceivable size (up to either 2TB or 32TB, I don't recall which is the theoretical limit).

A couple of earlier Windows versions could format larger FAT32 partitions than WinXP can handle, and I believe Win2K was one of them that could; but I can't guarantee it, so check it out before you launch it if you decide to start over and do a full format and have some reason for wanting to keep FAT32.

John