Hi all:
In an effort to wean my partner off of Windows without losing some of the programs upon which she has become reliant (and not really all that keen on getting into Wine, & Co) I am considering loading a second HDD along with her Win HDD. This is my plan thus far:

1. She has currently got a 6 or 7 GB Seagate and I'd be installing an 8 GB Seagate
2. I was going to put the 8 GB as the primary master (/dev/hda) so that I can run an easy distro like Mandrake and use LILO to boot into either Linux or Windows which would be the secondary master (/dev/hdc)
3. She has a CD-R which I was thinking of putting as /dev/hdb

Some questions/input requests:
(i) Would it be best to put the Win HDD as /dev/hdb or /dev/hdc (i.e. primary slave or secondary master)?
(ii) I am presuming that when it comes time to configure LILO to present a choice between OS's that despite the physical hardware set-up, as far as LILO is concerned the arrangement would be just like any other dual-boot arrangement - is this correct? If not, are there any tips or tricks I should pay heed to?

I will configure the jumpers as needed and the idea is to gradually transfer her Net/email accounts over to something like KDE, etc. after I have set up the firewall and the basic system security. I am also interested in hearing from others who have tried things similar to this plan and what their experiences were.
Cheers
- Andy

I've posted this before but can't remember where, or I'd link it.

Primary master /dev/hda came with NT 5
Primary slave /dev/hdb I added, installed Slack
Secondary master /dev/hdc came with DVD
Secondary slave /dev/hdd came with CDRW

I'd switch the optical drives on the second cable around except I'm too lazy.

Resized NT5 with Mandrake but ended up installing Debian over Mandrake. But from the beginning, LILO was installed to the MBR of hda and set to boot Slack by default - then I just added Debian as a second choice, bumping NT down to 3.

If I were you, I'd just slap the new drive on as slave and install Linux and set it to control the boot process. But I guess what you're talking about would work, depending on how Windows felt about it. But LILO doesn't care where anything is as far as I know, as long as you *tell* it where everything is.

The most reliable way to do what you want is to install Linux as the second hard drive as Windows isn't very happy booting off anything apart from /dev/hda (It refuses) and trickery is required. You can tell her, if she is dubious about removing Linux later, that all that is needed is an FDISK /MBR and the boot sectors will be Windows-only again.

If you decide Linux should be on the first hard drive then you will need to add a couple of lines into LILO or GRUB for the Windows entry.

LILO:
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81
map-drive=0x81
to=0x80

GRUB:
map 0x80 0x81
map 0x81 0x80

assuming that Linux is on /dev/hda and Windows on /dev/hdb
if Windows is on /dev/hdc then use 0x82 instead of 0x81.

As to whether /dev/hdb or /dev/hdc is better for the Windows drive, I would use /dev/hdb out of preference but it really shouldn't make any difference.

P.S. This is all from memory as I am not in front of a Linux box at the moment so if it doesn't work then a quick look at the man pages for LILO/GRUB should show how to sort any problems.

digiot & nhs:
Thanks guys - this is exactly the kind of input I was hoping for!!!
This is a project I am considering - my wife is a tad dubious (!!) so obviously I want to do it smoothly and cleanly so she has the smallest possible disruption to her usage/convenience.
I am filing this info away until such time as she is okay with the idea and then I'll tackle it. So, thank you for your input - if you have any other thoughts about this, please share.

All the best
- Andy