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However be warned that if your computer is relatively new then it might use Serial-ATA connectors for linking the drive to the motherboard, whereas older computers use Parallel-ATA, and thus you may be unable to hook the old drive up to your current computer. Just check that they fit together well and plug the molex connector into the drive that supplies its power. As long as the drive is still okay it should start up fine.

You will need to remember to change the slide out pin from master to slave on your old drive, otherwise the computer won't know which one it should be booting from. This pin is found next to the connector socket on the drive and should clearly be labelled which mode is which (whether master/slave/cable select).

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and victorious in war shall be made glorious in peace.

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You shouldn't need to reformat it unless the drive became corrupt or otherwise broken (and then you probably wouldn't be able to recover the files with any sort of ease).

However be warned that if your computer is relatively new then it might use Serial-ATA connectors for linking the drive to the motherboard, whereas older computers use Parallel-ATA, and thus you may be unable to hook the old drive up to your current computer. Just check that they fit together well and plug the molex connector into the drive that supplies its power. As long as the drive is still okay it should start up fine.

You will need to remember to change the slide out pin from master to slave on your old drive, otherwise the computer won't know which one it should be booting from. This pin is found next to the connector socket on the drive and should clearly be labelled which mode is which (whether master/slave/cable select).

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This, the stuff about IDE/SATA is relevant.  Although I'm pretty sure your newer motherboard will support both IDE (i.e. P-ATA) and SATA, don't be suprised if your old hard drive uses a different cable type to your newer one.

Also with the old hard disk plugged into your new computer, when you first fire up your computer enter the BIOS screen (it'll say something like "Press F1/Del to enter setup" or some other key which you should press).

You'll be presented with a fairly spartan-looking setup screen.  What you're looking for is something which refers to boot devices.

In every BIOS, there should be a fairly-accessible list of devices which your computer can boot off (you should find it with a bit of rummaging).  It'll have a list of devices such as CD-ROM drive, Floppy Drive, Hard drive etc.  The order in which these devices appear in the list is the order your computer will look to them for some medium to boot off.  For example, if you were installing Windows from a DVD, you'd need to have the DVD drive higher than the hard drive in the boot order, otherwise your computer would look at your hard drive, find the existing OS installation and boot of that before ever touching your DVD drive.

My point is, you need to make sure that your newer SATA hard drive (the hard drive that your computer always had) is positioned above the older IDE hard drive in the boot order.

That way, your new computer will boot from its original hard drive, not the hard drive from the old computer!

When you get into Windows you should be able to access the old hard drive no problem.

To avoid future issues, you may want to try killing the boot image on your old computer's hard drive to make it non-bootable in the future.  Only do this if you don't plan on using it to boot Windows from again.

PM me if you run into any issues or want further advice.