I find this thread very helpful! I am in the same boat.....I need Windows XP for most of my college courses but I want to venture into the world of Linux. I will save this thread becasue I have so many of the same questions regarding the dual boot system.

Thanks!!!!!

I agree with Lakota. I lost my only hard disk a few weeks ago, and although I dump a lot of stuff onto dvd's anyway, I lost a lot.

5 years ago I paid nearly £100 for a cd rewriter and cd's cost £10 for 3, last year I put 2 dvd rewriters on my computer as replacements (about £33 each) and DVD's are very cheap now about 2 for £1.

I used to work in a computer hall environment where we backed up everything to 3 generations - called grandfather, father and son. It was a massive job every week circulating hundreds of big old magnetic tapes between fireproof rooms in 3 buildings.

So I should know better than anybody to back-up data...

You're absolutely right. Since DVD-Rs are around 20p each when you by 25+, there's really no excuse for backing up at least all your documents and config files etc. every month or so.

And Lakota, that's what happens when you by Maxtor drives! Seagate and WD drives still have 3 or even 5-year warranties. I'm unlucky enought to currently have two Maxtor drives, both of which have bad sectors, so I work on the basis that they will both fail tomorrow. I'm eyeing up a Seagate SATA drive at the moment.

Thanks for the heads up. WD-3yr, Seagate-5yr. I do have a perfectly fine Seagate 6gig in my "closet pc". (longest life drive that I own) That sounds weird, retired pc kept incase of disaster on main desktop to get me through till I can replace main. Anyway, after checking warranties, will only shop for Seagate in future.

WOW. I have a huge problem with backup then. I have ONLY Maxtor drives. Usually, people just hate a company for whatever reason, and I fail to see why, sometimes, and when I questioned the 'tech experts' at the local computer store, they really had no answer for me as to why I shouldn't buy a Maxtor drive... Now I know, and I should have known better. I'm one of the lucky ones who has had a Maxtor for three plus years and has had nothing happen to it... No bad sectors, nothing.

And for sdmermaid: I found a walkthrough of the installation that really helped here:
http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/installmdv2006.html
The installation is hard to mess up on, but it's always helpful to have something printed out, sort of walking you through what you shouldn't miss.