wilkes

Sounds like a fun little 4 hour project. Which Linux distro have you decided to try?

the smartest thing to do is call Microsoft and get a legal copy of windows 7 or windows 8. WIN XP NO LONGER HAS UPDATES FROM MICROSOFT. I do not know why you would want to keep win xp......it is history with Microsoft......

Also, what you could do is install Win XP and Linux on the same HDD and then use that other 80GB HDD for storage. You could split that 80gb drive into 2, 40gb partitions and be all set. Only issue would be that you would have to install all the programs on the other HDD due to not having enough space on that one HDD. Which I have ran into some programs not working correctly when being installed on a separate HDD than the primary OS due to the registry being on a separate partition. May be worth a shot if you wanted to do it. Just throwing it out there as another option.

You'll also want to make sure the motherboard has an additional IDE slot. Some only come with 1 floppy and 1 ide slot which if that's the case then it will not work.

So you only want Linux on one of the HDD"s and also keep windows xp on the other one? I would just get a flash drive and use it for all of my data that I want to transfer over. Now note, if both of the computers are not the same then you are going to run into hardware driver errors and you will have to end up reformatting both of the HDD's due to mismatch hardware. If you don't do it properly you will have BSOD'S and lock ups.

So this is what I would do.

1.Make sure both PC's have the same specs.
2.Put all of your data that you want to transfer onto a usb drive.
3. Install Linux on one of the 80gb drives. It will reformat it as it goes.
4. You never mentioned if the drives are sata or IDE. Guessing on the size, it sounds like IDE. If that's the case you will need to setup the jumpers correctly. I would make the Win XP the primary and the Linux the slave/secondary.
5. I'm not for sure how the boot manager works but I would assume it needs to be installed on the primary HDD.
6. After getting the boot manager setup and configured then choose where you want to transfer your data back to. You can either transfer it back to the Windows XP drive or put it on the Linux drive. Either one will work just fine.
7. Profit.

I want to move the 80 gb hd from my older computer and add it as a second hd in my newer computer that also has 80gb hd. I want to then copy all my docs from one hd to the other hd --pdf, xls, doc . After all my win stuff is on one hd, I then want to replace one win xp with a Linux OS on one of the hd's and have both hds in the new computer. Not really sure I can put both hds in one computer with XP being on both hds. Not sure how to copy all the info from one drive to the other in order to install a Linux system on one. The system that I want to add to contains an existing 80gb hd, 1 floppy, 1cd and 1burner. How do I tell if I can add another hd?

Not quite sure I understand your question. Are you wanting to run 2 OS's off of 1 HDD? If so, you can just partition the drive accordingly and use the default windows boot manager to choose between the 2 OS's. If you want to switch between different OS's on 2 different HDD's, then that boot manager will work for that purpose.

Has anyone used OSL2000 Boot Manager? I have two computers and both have win xp. Can I put the hard drive into the newer one and use both systems separately. Will this boot manager work for this purpose? Eventually I would like to copy all my win docs into one hd and use the other hd for Linux. Will this work or am I just dreaming? Thanks in advance for your help.