When I installed linux, I chose "automatic partitioning". So linux went out to my slave HD, created a swap partition and wiped out the partition that I had been using to backup my linux stuff.

I made space, using System Commander, on my Master HD for the swap partiton (517M), and it is sitting there, empty.

I would like to delete the swap partition that is on my slave drive, and set one up on my master to take its place.

I can use System Commander to erase the partition on my slave drive and I can format the partition on my master drive as "linux swap". But I suspect it is not that simple. How do I do this without totally screwing my system up? Do I have to tell linux something, somewhere, so that it looks for the "linux swap" partition not on the slave, but on the master drive now?

you can check out the mkswap command to create swap spaces where ever... and i am not sure why but you shouldn't need over 500 megs of space for a swap.. usually 100 megs or less is good to have.

You'll have to edit your fstab file to tell linux where the new swap file is. Just look for the line that has swap in it and the change the first column to the new partition.

Having the swap on a slave hd can be a good thing, even better is having the swap as the first partition on a slave drive because with a hd the "first" part is on the outside of the platter whereas on a CD the first part is on the inside, having a swap as the first partition on a slave means that the drive heads don't have to move much when accessing the swap.