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Problems creating a dual boot WinXP (Win7) & Fedora Core9 on HP XW6400

I am not a complete Linux newbie, but not a total expert either. I do have a special case goin' on:

Used HP xw6400 with 4Gb RAM & 2x 2.33Gb Intel Dual Core procs.
The machine came w/3-drives. 1-80Gb SATA, installed, 1-80Gb SATA (not installed)and 1-250IDE (not installed). Currently, XP-pro(32bit) is on one of the 80Gb SATA drives. Both SATA drives are formatted NTFS

The goal is to set it up w/ Win7(64) on one of the SATA drives, 64-bit Fedora Core 9 on the other SATA, and the 250 IDE as a common access data drive.

I don't know how the IDE drive is formatted. The machine attempts to boot from it,when connected, and obviously, there's no OS on it.

Yes, I know FC9 is old, but it's a sync thing w/ an animation studio, and Win7 is to stay in sync with a school where I teach. (they are running Vista64, and will be switching soon).

Help! Here are the questions:
1) How do I get the BIOS to recognize the IDE as something other than a 'master'? (jumper is set for 'slave', but it still tries to boot)

2) Can Linux be mounted on NTFS? I need the larger file sizes (over 4Gb) that NTFS allows.

3) Can I use the IDE as a data drive for both OS?

Any help is appreciated.
Thanx!
andygravity

I may be wrong but I believe if you have ide and sata drives the ide will boot first. You can get around this by chainloading with grub.

Linux will not install on ntfs, it will read and write to ntfs if you have nfs-3 installed.

Yes the ide can be used for data storage for both operating systems, you can use fat 32 or ntfs. Fat 32 has one draw back, it will only store files up to 2 gig.

You can make the IDE non-bootable from the BIOS setup, but it depends on your bios

Also try putting the IDE-disk's jumper in Single mode

I don't know if this will help, but you can partition 100 mb boot partition on your IDE drive, from there you can load any OS you want, and use the reminder of storage for what you like. You should think about using FEDORA 10, the installer can configure it, out of the box.