Re-set up a dual boot system w/ a 120G WD1200JB(8M)... pls help!!!!!!

[piginspring]

current rig:
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OS: XP Pro + Redhat 7.2
CPU: Athlon 1.2G
MB: Epox 8k7a
MEM: 512M Crucial pc2100
HD1(master): WD 60g 5400rpm w/ XP on it
HD2(slave): Maxtor 20g 7200 w/ redhat
Vid: GF3 Ti200
Lite-on 24x CD-RW, toshiba 16x dvd...
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just got a Dell/WD 120G, 8M cache HD. i'm thinking to set it as master and put xp pro on it, then install redhat on the 60g WD. it also could be a backup drive.

Questions:
1. after i set the 120g HD as master, old 60g as slave, can i install XP directly? (don't wanna reformat the old 60g coz there'r still a lot of stuffs on it.) some guys said the system will crash since there r two bootable active partitions??
2. or can i use Ghost's disk to disk function to copy the whole thing on the 60g WD to the new 120g hd?
3. what's the best partition set up on the 120g hd? sys: 20G, work: 10G, data 90g??
BTW, a werid thing is, occassinally the BIOS won't recognize the 20G Maxtor HD or only recongnize part of it (5.1G)? what's the problem?

any suggestions will be highly appreciated!!!!!

 

[vetteguy]

Let's see...

1. As long as you don't have the second drive set up as a bootable one in the BIOS, you should be ok. But here's a suggestion, add in the 120GB as a slave, then copy all the data from the 60GB over to it. Then you can blow away what's on the 60 and not worry about the potential conflict.

Are you planning on using the 60 exclusively for Redhat, or are you going to store data on it? If you're going to use it just for Redhat, you could partition the 120 as like 6GB for system, (we'll say 10 for sake of math), 40 for applications, then the rest for data. Or whatever you want to do. I have always had 1 partition for system and another for applications, but I keep my data on a separate drive.

 

[piginspring]

thanks a lot!
i don't wanna use the whole WD 60g for linux. 15G should be enough. guess i'll keep the origianl partitions setup (15g + 10g + 35g) and install redhat on the 15g one (which is used to be for xp pro). is that ok?

and any suggestions for "fail to recongnize maxtor hd..."?