Well, I couldn't think of any other suitable location to post this (Yes, even admins are at times stumped about the perfect place to post something in).

Here's the issue.

2 Hard Disks - one 120GB IDE as Data storage, currently housing Win XP Pro on a partition, all my data on a partition and a scratch parition for photoshop.
The other HD, is a SATA - soon to come - 250GB - so it's empty space LOL.

Goal : Have the OSes (Win XP Pro and Gentoo) on the SATA, have multimedia files on the SATA on their own partition and the rest of DATA on the IDE. (And a seperate partition to install programs on for Win on the SATA)

Issues I foresee in this set-up, and questions I have :
- Does this work? Because I need to change the boot flag on the disks, I can't disconnect the IDE because then win will start to annoy me with messages.
- Will it be a good performance as oposed to OS on IDE and data on SATA?
- I've also considered installing Linux on the IDE and Win on the SATA - but then I'd have to boot from two drives...

As you can tell, despite my experience with dual boots (I am not that good in making manual changes to my bootloader's config file.) I am somewhat weary about 2 disks, never had that luxury before.

 

 

 

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I think, the best solution is to setup windows XP and Gentoo on the IDE and leave SATA for data storing use, you can use partation magic to edit your partations sizes and create some empty spaces for gentoo to use on IDE, i think 4GB is so enough for system "root partation" with ext2 file-system and (/) mount point, whatever space you want for storage "home partation" with ext3 filesystem and (/home) mount point, and 512MB for swap area.
in this case it will be a dual boot on the same hard disk "IDE" then you can use your SATA as a storage space on both systems, i think if i'm in your position i will use that solution.

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i think you should have / and swap on SATA if you wnat performance. if not then atleast SWAP should be on sata ..but then it dependes how much RAM do you have. I have 995 MB RAM available to my gentoo box and it rarely uses the 1024 SWAP i have allocated.

As for media files ...i dont think you need them on SATA ..unless you have very very high def videos or have to share media files for alot of clients.

As for can it be done ..the answer is yes. But certain motherboards have freaky issues with grub which you wont find untill you do the deed. So go ahead and install grub and tell us if u have any problems.

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I would suggest something, from my own experience. It needs some time, but it's absolutely not risky, and you can go back at any time.
1) Create a partition on the SATA disk.
2) Make a ghost backup of your Windows partition, put the backup on the third partition of the SATA disk.
3) Powerdown your system, and remove your IDE disk. So, no danger, you will change nothing on your windows boot settings.
4) Boot on our ghost CD-rom, and ask ghost to restore the backup from the third partition, on the first partition (provided that you made it slightly bigger than the original one).
5) When the restore is finished, verify that Windows now works correctly from the SATA disk. Now, your system is safe, on the SATA disk as you want.
6) Powerdown the system, add the IDE disk, verify that you are still booting off the SATA disk. Else, you should consider formatting the IDE disk off a MS-DOS floppy. This is the only dangerous step, because it's the only moment where you cannot go back.
Hope this helped.

Yordan

 

 

 

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To answer a few questions, I have 1024MB RAM, so I am fairly safe. The reason for wanting both OS'es on SATA is simple. I want performance, though I am starting to think that I'll be better off installing Win on the IDE so I can use a different PHYSICAL partition (on the SATA) as scratch disk for photoshop etc. It would boost it's performance.

As far as the ghost image, I can't do that. Well I can, but I don't want to. I need a clean win install LOL.

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