Hi all,

Currently I have one HDD, dual booting xp and mandy. Let's say this is HDD1. HDD1 is connected to the primary master IDE. I also have one CD burner (ROM1), connected to secondary master.

Recently I got my hands on a second HDD (HDD2), and a second CD ROM (ROM2). I would like to install xp and linux on HDD2 as well, so that I will have four bootable partitions. I would also want to install the second CD ROM for faster CD to CD copying.

Now the question is, how do I do this? Which IDE setting should each device go? I've heard that a slave drive won't be bootable, but others say that Bootmagic (which I have) can do the trick.

Basically I have two options, and I need comments:

Option 1:

Primary Master IDE: HDD1
Primary Slave IDE: HDD2
Secondary Master IDE: ROM1
Secondary Slave IDE: ROM2

Option 2:

Primary Master IDE: HDD1
Primary Slave IDE: ROM1
Secondary Master IDE: HDD2
Secondary Slave IDE: ROM2

Which one will work? Which one won't? Which one will give me max speed and performance?

Any comments will be appreciated. Thanks,

AC

When anyone has two HDDs, they should *always* both go on the primary IDE channel. This will give max performance. I believe that having 2 xp partitions is unecessary, but that is up 2 u.

Remember to put the faster drive on master: this way, the slower drive wont affect the faster drive's speed.