I am getting a new IDE disk cheap can a IDE & SATA disk run togeter I beleve I need a cable do I need to set the jumpers on the IDE(slave) I havent got it yet probley the end of the month but at £10 I grabed it, I am running ubunta 10.10
Yes you can have an IDE and a SATA in a PC at the same time, and NO as long as the IDE hard drive is the only device attached to the IDE ribbon cable there should be no need to set the jumpers… the jumpers are only for when there are 2 devices attached to the same ribbon cable.
Just make sure your motherboard supports IDE & SATA, otherwise you’ll most likely have to find a SATA > IDE cable.
I have the drive now windows dos see it how do I format the drive without formating the current drive this will be a data disk probley jpegs do I need to alter any settings such as equilent of path in windows?
If you need Windows to be able to see the drive, you’ll want to format it as FAT, FAT32, or NTFS… probably easiest to do this from within Windows.
In Windows, just Click My Computer icon on the desktop (or start menu), then right-click the drive icon (that you want to format), and select Format.
Just be careful not to select the drive that has the OS on it 
Also be aware, formatting the drive will erase ALL data stored on the drive.
If the drive contains partitions, and you want to manipulate them, you’ll have to do it from the Windows Disk Manager… or Gparted (or the Disk Utility) from within Linux.
If you’re not 100% sure that you’re formatting the correct drive… STOP, don’t do it.
If this is the case, your best bet would be to physically disconnect the original drive from the motherboard, leaving ONLY the new drive connected… then boot to a Linux LiveCD (such as the GParted LiveCD), and format the drive.
When finished, shut down… reconnect the original drive, and boot from it.
That way it will be physically impossible to format the original drive.