I attempted an installation of Mandrake 8.0 into an empty partition on my Windows2000 box and managed to screw it up. Being eager to try linux for the first time ( and having a Ghost backup of windows c:\ ) I used fdisk, made one partition and then installed the mandrake disks which went smoothly. I had a chance to play with linux, pretty neat with internet access over my cable working like a charm but alas, I now had to restore w2k in order to get on with other things.
I made a Ghost backup of working Mandrake and have restored it to D:\ partition of the HD.

My question: If I had Mandrake start up disks would I be able to boot with them and access the Linux on D: ?

In other words, I want to be able to keep Windows available on my only machine and also have a copy of Linux on a separate partition even if I have to boot from disks ( or better yet a CD ). I realize a dual boot might be convenient but I seem to be too dense to accomplish that. Thanks for the advice.