Hello, I am new to this forum (and still somewhat a novice at computers), and this is my first post. My system looks like this: K8 Triton series motherboard model GA-K8VM800M VIA K8M800 chipset 512Mb of RAM 80G Western Digital HDD containing XP Home Edition 2002 SP2 (Primary Master) Sony CD RW CRX160E (Secondary Master) Sony DVD RW DRU-700A (Secondary Slave) I have a second HDD that has XP and I am about to install Fedora Core 2 on it, it is a 20G Maxtor. I would like to be able to dual-boot these 2 drives and I do not know how to set up the HDD jumpers or how to set them up on my IDE channels to be able to choose between the 2 drives when I power up. Can someone please describe to me step by step how to do this. I am somewhat new to this stuff, but I know enough to do the leg work if someone can give me instructions. Thanks in advance.
I believe if you just set it to secondary slave on the same ide as your other disk, you'll be able to boot up with a choice of both xps. Then just put the fedora boot disk in and install it over the 20gig partition.
Thanks for the replies. I am still a little confused though and I also think that I did'nt word my original post correctly so I am going to do so now because I also have changed up my senario a little. Right now I have Windows XP Home 2002 SP2 on my 80Gb Western Digital which is installed on my primary IDE board connection and it is set as single (no jumper installed on hdd). I have the blue end of the cable connected to the board and the far end (black connector) on my hdd. I now have a blank 20Gb Maxtor not installed on the system yet. On the Maxtor I want to partition with Partition Magic and give about 15Gb to Windows XP Professional which I will install first. Then I am going to install Red Hat Fedora Core 2 on the 20Gb and let it install it self on the unallocated space that I left over with Partition Magic. I did this originally by disconnecting my main 80Gb drive from the system, and setting up the 20Gb on the primary and setting it as master, then installed XP Pro on the 15gig partition and Fedora on the left over space (about 5gig) and Grub allowed me to choose to boot from either OS and all was well. Then I decided that it would be nice to be able to choose from either drive at startup. So then I tried the suggestions you gave me but when I had my 80gig primary set as master on the black end of cable and the 20gig containing XP Home + Fedora set as slave on middle (grey) connector on primary IDE, my pc always booted into the 80gig drive and windows saw the 20gig as an extra drive I guess. So then I uninstalled Fedora from the 20gig, left the drives both set up as stated above, tried to reinstall Fedora on the 20gig and told it to let me choose to boot itself , XP Pro which is on the same drive,and also to let me choose XP Home on the primary master during startup and it would not set up the drives (partitions) that way. Now I went ahead and wiped the 20gig and only have the 80gig containing XP Home on the primary. So now I'm back to square one and want to install XP Pro and Fedora on the 20gig and be able to choose from all 3 on startup without either of the 3 OS's interfering with each other especially if one of them crashes. So once again if anyone can help me out or describe a simpler way to set this set up I would be very grateful Sorry for the long explanation, but I just want to make sure I am being clear about what I'm trying to do. Thanks again, especially for your tolerance of newbies like me.
