forgive the probably annoying and newbish question but just to be sure, would I be able to install slackware on a secondary (primary slave I think) hard drive? if so, may I please have some tips and possibly help links for installation - I've never done this before and I want to make sure I don't accidentally format a hard drive.

thanks for any help

-Noido

AT the time of the setup you can choose where/which drive/partition to install.
Does your secondary hard drive contains existing partitions/data?

it hasn't got any other partitions except the "main" one, but it's half full of data.

sorry, I forgot to mention this is meant to dual boot with windows (dont laugh at me)

(thanks for the quick reply)

If theres enough free space on your secondary hdd, you have to resize it to make room for slack partitions. If you have some partitioning utlity like Partition Magic, you can resize it using it. Otherwise you can resize at the time of slackware installation. And then create slack partitions. However, I'm not familiar with slackware distribution, so I don't exactly know what partition tool/schemes it provides during installation. Someone familiar with slack will surely help you here.
Yeah, no problem you can dual boot as long as u like

great! thanks evil.

one more question though, if you can be bothered, will the default windows partitioning tools work for creating a slack partition?

thanks again!

well, no

hokay then. I realise that may have been a very stupid question.... but hey. who said I wasn't stupid.

but thanks

hey, no problem!
you're not stupid.
And don't hesitate to post if you have any questions/comments or if u need further help.
Rightt now, I'm going for a sleep.
c ya.

The partitioning tool in windows can be used to create a partition but it'll be formated in ntfs or vfat (depends on your choice and windows version). It can still make the slackware installation easier because you just have to reformat an existing partition instead of creating a new from scratch.

Personally, I run a multi boot system where I've created all partitions from windows and then reformatted them during my slack install.