Hi.

I need advice about formating a new slave HD on my system.  The 
situation's not quite that clear-cut though.

Background info:

My Master Hard Drive currently has WIN XP loaded on it, that's my 
operating system for now.

On my new Slave Hard Drive I want to install a distribution of 
GNU-LINUX, in order to learn it.

Once I am comfortable using the new OS, I will wipe clean the Master 
Hard Drive and install LINUX on it as my new OS.

I also want to move a lot of files (not programs) to the new hard drive 
now, in anticipation of my formating the main HD.

The original, master, hard drive is 120gig.  The new one is 250gig.  IDE.


This should maybe be in two different threads, but hopefully I can 
figure everything out together:

1) The new hard drive is hooked up, and it's recognized in the BIOS, but 
apparently Windows hasn't assigned it a drive number.
  Is this because the HD hasn't been formatted yet?

2) Should I try to format the new drive with the active OS (WinXP), or 
do I have a choice at this point.
  I'm wondering about formatting, between the two different Operating 
Systems.
  Knowing nothing yet of LINUX, I don't know if the Operating Systems 
can read each other's directories.
  I think I can run LINUX on the second hard drive if it's formatted by 
WinXP, and I expect that the master hard drive will be formatted by 
LINUX when it's time to format the main drive and install LINUX on it.

3) Which leads me next to wonder if the slave hard drive will then have 
to be emptied, and reformatted also, by the new reigning Operating System.

5) How does WinXP format new hard drives?  I can't get my Help in WinXP 
to open, and I'm confused by the online information because a lot of it 
is old and referring to older operating systems, or to partitions, and 
so on.

Does all of this remind you of a specific tutor someplace?  If so, I'll 
be very grateful for the URL to the guide if it has advice that pertains 
to my situation.

Thanks very much for any help here.

Greg P.

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