The drive letters are a relative matter-each OS has its own registry, so a
reference to "C" on one may be reference to "D" on another. I've noticed in
my Win 7 dual-boot, that I'm always booting to "C", but that may not be true
with XP. The OS will handle it, so don't concern yourself with drive
letters.
The boot loader will appear at boot time and ask you which OS you want to
start. As you said, it specifies the disk and partition, so, again, you
don't have to worry about this aspect. When you remove an OS, you'll need to
edit this file or put up with an annoying and unnecessary prompt when you
boot. Google "Edit boot.ini" to see how this is done.
I think you know by now that you can image your OS, or do a disk copy to
avoid all this reinstall stuff, so I guess you have your reasons for doing
this.


On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 5:31 PM, g.Computer9f <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Well, apparently I DO have dual drives, since I just learned (from you in
> another post "Attaching IDE HardDrive to IDE DVD Cable") that I can cable
> the drive/system I already have installed to my IDE DVDwriter cable.  So I
> won't need 3 partitions anywhere but the backup drive.  Two disks will each
> have a system partition and a data partition.  The third disk will have a
> data backup partition, a C-images partition, and a pagefile partition.
>
> So, I will remove the current 120GB Seagate (Disk 2) from the Master
> position on IDE-cable-1 and install it in the slave position on IDE-cable-2
> (with the DVDwriter) and hope I still have something on how to reset the
> jumper switches!
>
> Then I will install my brand-new WD Caviar 320GB (Disk 1) in the Master
> position on IDE-cable-2 with my Slave backup disk, which is another WD
> Caviar 320GB (Disk 3),  and install XP on the new drive in the first
> partition.  (Thankfully, at least Disk 3 won't need any modifications).
>
> I will move certain folders (My Documents, OE email store, etc.) to the
> second partition on this drive and point to the swap/pagefile on Disk 3,
>  I'm assuming it does not matter if both boots use the same pagefile space -
> I clear it at shutdown anyway.
>
> My big question now is...
> When I boot from the Seagate on the DVD cable, will it boot up as Drive C??
>  Will the drive letters change depending on which partition I boot from?
>  All the registry address references and my shortcuts and applications (of
> which there are many) all reference the system drive as C.
>
> There is a method to my madness, as you say, or maybe a madness to my
> method?  I want to install my system from scratch, but I want to do it in
> bits and pieces as I have the time (I'm slow and have a good many apps to
> configure) and I cannot afford to have my system down for an extended
> period.  So I want to be able to switch between my working system and my
> in-process installation when I have time to work on it.
>
> What I would like to end up with is XP on the first partition on each of
> the two system drives, with the Seagate just being a failsafe boot in case
> of emergency (or I may eventually put Linux on it).
>
> In the meantime, until I get my new drive install all finished (maybe a
> month or two), will both systems boot themselves up as Drive C?   Will I
> need to modify the drive letters every time I switch boots?
>
> I am grateful for all your spot-on help;
> thank you so much,
> AnnaSummers
>
> P.S.  A couple of questions about what you said below....
>
> XP will take care of the boot loader. You can edit this file (boot.ini)
> later.
> I don't even know what this means.  What do I need to know about it? I just
> looked at boot.ini and I see it is about boot partition sequence, but I
> don't really understand the syntax.
>
>
> Don't worry about the drive letters. If you end up booting to F: it doesn't
> matter.
> What about everything on the drive referencing "C:\" to begin location
> pointers?
> Would windows let me change the letter to C, just to keep from confusing
> myself?
>
>
> There's no need to fiddle with anything in the BIOS except when you boot to
> the CD.
> I always have the boot order as:    1-floppy    2-CD     3-HardDrive
> But now there will be two hard drives.  Wouldn't I have to switch the ORDER
> of the two hard drives if I wanted to change the boot source?
>

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