Hi I found this really good web page http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html and it answered many of my questions. However, it said one thing I was hoping isn't true anymore:

"If you have multiple hard drives (disks), /boot must be on the same hard drive (probably the first hard drive) that has the Windows boot loader (NTLDR) on the MBR."

I was planning to install a linux distribution onto a second harddrive and not mess with the windows partition at all. Is there no way to both install LILO or GRUB on the Linux drive and use that to boot the windows partition on the other drive? Must LILO/GRUB in a boot sector be on the same drive as Windows? I can make the linux drive master and the windows drive slave if that would help...

thanks for the advice!

You can do whatever you want butkeep in mind that Windoze must be (or think it is) installed on your first hard drive. So you have the following alternatives:
1. Put Windoze on the first drive and use ntldr to boot linux on the 2nd drive
2. Put Linux in the first drive and use lilo/grub to boot Windoze. To fool Windoze that it's on your 1st disk you must use the map-drive option in /etc/lilo.conf (I don't use grub so I don't know the grub option).
3. If you have a recent BIOS you can boot whatever drive you want. Again put Windoze on the primary disk.

Regards

Windoze... is that like falling asleep halfway through a window? It doesn't look cool, I promise you.

In answer to the question, /boot doesn't need to be on the first drive. I have a seperate partition for my /boot and it's on the second drive and running quite happily. Mind you I don't have Windows on my first drive it's FreeBSD but well, you get the picture

Is wrong.....

I wonder if they are referring to using NTLDR to dual-boot Linux? Even then, I think it is wrong

I see, thanks for the advice.

So I can tell bios to boot my second hard drive and then simply install LILO to the /boot on the second drive and tell LILO to boot Windows on the first disk?

Quick follow up question. How big should I typically make the /boot partition?

A /boot partition can be small - its basically a matter of how many kernel-images you want to store there.
Mine is 32 MB

If I read you correctly:
you got something wrong! this will not work!
If you want to it like described - set BIOS to boot off the second HD and use lilo to boot your system then it must be installed to the MBR of the disk - else nothing will boot.

if I install lilo to the mbr on the second drive do I even need a /boot partition?

No.
It is just convenient to have one.
This way, when you have multiple operating-systems installed, the administration is easier, because there is just one place where you can keep all kernels - and in particular useful if you use grub as boot-loader, since it installs its files also to /boot.
Any boot-loader is best installed to the MBR - one at least, be it lilo or grub or NTLDR - this one then has to be set up to be able to get to the others.
If you like to, you can do all this with NTLDR from windows - but I personally don't know how this would be done exactly.
To me, grub is the easiest to set up and very reliable. You can even boot a OS which is not in the configuration-file because it has a command-line interface right at the boot-prompt.