have a 10.2(5200rpm) Samsung HD.i want to attach a second 40 GB HD to my system.so these are my questions: 1.can i have a 5200 and a 7200 rpm HD in the same system? 2.does it depend on the Mainboard type or power supply type?? 3.how do i set up both of them? i don't have much know-how on hardware.im using WinXp Pro. and i want to boot from my old HD and use the new one as a slave or whatever. don't ask me to just throw away my old drive!!lol i can't do that!

Hi- From what I've read, most newer (1999- ) PC's have the power to support two hard drives. I'm about to try the same thing more or less myself in the next day or so (though to dual-boot Linux ;)- I also have Win98 & Win2000Pro on the first drive. Most PC's have the ability to run two devices on each of the two IDE cables (ribbons). You can look to be sure that the cable that attaches your existing drive has a place in the middle of the "ribbon" to attach a second drive- & that there's a free power supply plug hanging near. If you have only the two hard drives & one other drive (CD, DVD, burner) the best bet is to put the two HD's as masters (primary, secondary)w/ the other CD-type attached to the secondary HD as slave (it's probably sitting there as master right now). The ideal in this situation would be to put the new, faster HD on the primary master-alone- & put your operating system on it. Use the older drive as secondary master w/the CDROM as slave. I've read that hooking slower devices to faster ones renders them both as slow as the slowest one on. Do a "search" at www.extremetech.com "discussions" area. Lots of good info & advice there. Good luck!! (Me, too! ;)

thanx for the reply,but i think i don't have a Y - connector cable.so does that mean,my mainboard will not support 2 hard drives.its a P6BAPMe board with VIA Apollo Pro chipset. hope that helps. the reason for which i want to attach the 2nd disk is that - i want to load SuSE on it as i have Win Xp Pro on the old drive.if i set both as master,will i get the option of booting into either OS's at startup??