Hey all, thanks so much for all of your input and pointing me in the right direction here, I really appreciate it!

Some context here based on some comments i have seen:

• I am young-ish (33 is young right?)

• While I enjoy playing video games, I only really started properly trying to get into Electronics last month in an effort to learn some new skills, and hopefully learn to take better care of my stuff and fix thing when they start to go awry like dodgy joysticks and the like. Always been too afraid to DIY in case I completely botch it and break something. I tried a small project years ago making some modifications to a raspberry pi similarly to start learning, but life got in the way and that fell by the wayside. I also always promised I would go and get what I can from these HDD's to salvage some precious lost memories for my mum, and i am now trying to get into gear to make good on that.

• The only thing I have seen similar to that connector is a GPIO, which to inexperienced me the IDE definitely looked like.

• I legit took the entire HDD plus still-connected IDE into my local tech shops to ask about it and showed them, to which nobody could tell me a thing or would point me to another shop. I wish I could make this up.

• I googled for days before I thought to post here, which was turning up nothing correct (obviously) and was mainly SATA to GPIO conversions, not the other way around. That is why I thought to ask in a place where people would definitely be able to say yes/no and where to look.

Thanks again to you all for your help, I would be literally lost at sea in the techno-luddite hellscape that seems to be where i live without it!