Um I want to install xubuntu (or lubuntu, whichever download finishes first) and I have two hard drives: one thats 30gigs for WinXP and another that's ten gigs for (X)(L)ubuntu. When I say use entire drive in the full installer will it overite both drives or just the one. Im sorry just a little nervous l... The Power went out during the Kubuntu install (it somehow stll worked fine) and ever since iv been a bit nervous. Kubuntu has been removed.

I wouldn't do any auto install option. Use the manual or Advanced option so you can select which drive you want with the Allocate Drive Space window. Should be easy in your case since your drives are different sizes.

Absolutely.

There are enough horror stories out there about any auto install in just about every installer. Ubuntu seems to have the most of them.

This could be because a lot of inexperienced folks are doing it but I would not trust it a bit.

Use the manual install option which is called "something else" by the clear thinking and speaking people at Ubuntu.

Where did you two get the word 'auto' and I don't have any data on the second drive( it does have about 6 partitions that are starting to get confusing) all I said was full which ment when you boot to cd I want the install optin it gives you at the little menu.

Use the manual or advanced option and then go through the selections. Select the 2nd drive to install to. It will erase those partitions ( did you just remove the data?) and install using the "full" drive.

Hope this helps. Post back.

Unless you use the manual (or "something else") option, you are letting a script format and partition your drive. This is "auto". It is not a real great option as it does not do that great a job at the best of times.

Your install should be on 2 partitions, / (root) and /home with a /swap partition. All you will get with any of the auto install scripts is / and /swap.

That you have nothing on the drive that you want to keep means that it is probably safe to use one of the auto options. I would be disconnecting the drive you are not installing on just to be safe.

I would strongly recommend Lubuntu. It is fast and light on computer resources. If you stick with the lightweight apps that are used for X/Lubuntu, you will have a much faster and efficient system than you would have if you had chosen K/Ubuntu. Even Xubuntu (with XFCE) includes pulse audio and other resource hogging components that have been inherited from the increasingly bloated Ubuntu.

Here is a good tutorial on installing Ubuntu onto the second hard drive with Windows on the first hard drive. It discusses how to install the grub2 boot loader to the second hard drive. This way your Windows hard drive is not affected by linux at all; but you can still boot both Ubuntu and WindowsXP when the computer boots.
http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Eherman546/p24.html
Note that the tutorial uses Windows7. However, the same idea applies to dual booting with WindowsXP.

Since you are only using 10GB for Ubuntu, I would just install Ubuntu using 2 partitions (root and swap), instead of partitioning Ubuntu with 3 partitions (root, swap, and /home). A separate /home partition keeps your data on a separate partition from the system files.
See this tutorial on the advantages of a separate /home partition, as well as how to set up a separate /home partition if you choose to do so: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installseparatehome
Note: The swap partition can be 1GB. The other 9GB that you have allocated for Ubuntu will be used for the root partition.