Easy question
 

I'm trying to ditch my windows desktop and I have a question before I pull the plug. I have 3 physical hard drives in my system. 2 are for mp3s, backup, storage etc. 1 is for the OS. I have converted the 2 backups to FAT32 so that linux can read them, but I don't want to install them right when I install linux.

Call me extra paranoid, but I want them completely removed from my system during the installation and initial configuration so that I don't accidentally screw them up. Later, I want to add these back into the system and mount them so that I have access to my MP3s and backed up data.

Is there any reason why this would be a problem? Is it easy to add/remove hard drives in linux after the initial install?

PS - I'm planning on going with Mandrake. (maybe 10.1 RC1)

Thanks for your time.

Unplug the cables from the backs of the drives during installation.

it shouldn't be a problem,. Mandrake uses kudzu wh9ich automatically detects stuff. Even if it doesn't mandrake will definately install the IDE drivers and all you would have to do is update fstab. (If it comes to that we can help)