Dualboot with SATA and IDE drives

[apc15x]

Hello all I am just about 2 weeks from building my new box and I have a problem about the drives. 95% of my time is spent in Ultimate 1.8 so I want to put it on my new SATA drive and put XP on my IDE drive. I have been reading a lot of information about it but noticed that most say to put XP on the SATA drive and Ultimate on the IDE drive but I don't want to do that, I want to use my new drive with Ultimate. Can anyone give me some info about what are my options with this issue? Thanks in advance

[Baphomet]

It CAN be done but I'm going to let someone else explain the Ins-n-Outs of exactly how to set it up. The problem, such as it is, is that frequently GRUB and your PC's BIOS handle boot priorities a little differently and unless something is different in 8.04/1.8 you run the very real risk of a GRUB error, since BIOS (most commonly) presents the IDE drives first (in boot priority) where the kernel presents the IDE drives last (in boot priority). So there is a critical issue in mixed-drive systems where one of the drives may not be recognized and where Grub will experience issues trying to boot to a specific drive. Trust me, I tried it. If you wish to pursue this, it most certainly CAN be done, but it requires an expertise beyond my ability. Also, this issue does not ALWAYS manifest itself this way; frequently, but not always. Sometimes it's a simple matter of adjusting the boot priority in the system BIOS.

The simpler, and in my opinion better solution in many ways, is to install Windows XP then install Ultimate on the same SATA drive and then use the IDE drive as a slave-drive for data, system backups, etc.

Do as you wish, of course, but that would be my personal recommendation. But then too, I'm awfully big on backing things up.

[apc15x]

Thanks Baphomet for the reply. I was doing some more checking and I see that I could buy another SATA drive for $40.00 - $60.00 that I could use for XP and maybe this would be easier. I have been dual booting for some time (IDE) but I have always preferred to use 2 drives opposed to 1 drive. And at the very least I can just get ride of XP altogether. Again thanks for the help.