I installed a slave drive a my computer and wanted to install XP on the slave drive so that if any thing ever happen to my primary drive I could boot and run off my slave drive and not be down. Not sure how to install an OS to a slave drive. I don't have just an XP installation CD. I have 7 disc that came from HP. I sure hate to install all that junk when I only what XP, but does this complicate things(7 HP Disc instead of just the os XP)? After I direct Bois to boot to CD first can I Direct the installation to the slave drive? Will I loose data that I have stored on my slave drive? It will not affect the C drive (primary) at all, right? Any suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks!

Yeah, as far as I know, you should be able to just boot from your XP CD and then change the installation folder from C:\WINDOWS\ to whatever drive letter your slave drive has, D:\WINDOWS\ for example. It won't effect primary drive or any other data on slave drive, unless you happen to have a folder called WINDOWS on that drive already.

Your best bet is to temporary disconnect the current drive C; and install XP on slave drive as if it were the only drive in the system.

Installing with C: still you will get Windows on the slave drive, but the boot files will be put on drive c: The boot files include ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini which always go on the boot drive, regardless of where you might install Windows.

You my end up in the situation where you have a dual boot system and the slave drive will not boot without drive c:

Installing two identical operating systems is not the normal thing to do and can cause problems unless you understand exactly what happens during the boot process.

Stuart

Tread with extreme caution in a proprietary system. That 7 disk HP set might just be a "restore" set that will wipe everything in order to restore your PC to "factory" condition.
You should also be aware that if you do successfully create a dualboot system by installing a second operating system to the slave drive, it may not save you in the event of a primary drive failure, since the bootfiles for both operating systems will be on the root of the C drive anyway.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach him to fish and his wife will never forgive you.

Here's what you do for what you have explained. You said you did not want all the extra stuff on the recovery disks, just XP right?
First download Jelly Bean Keyfinder and use it to find your true Windows key(it may differ from your oem numbers you got with the computer). Then you have the two numbers, the hp numbers and the one that you found.
Then borrow a XP installation cd and unhook the original hard drive and hook up the slave in its place. I don't know how big your slave drive is 7-10 gigs for is plenty just for a backup install of XP so partition it accordingly so you can have the rest of the drive for storage. Then install XP on the slave drive with the borrowed XP cd(you can partition and format with the XP cd also) You just have to use your own numbers(which ever set works) and it has to be the same version as your original installation(home or Pro). Make sure to activate it.
When done just turn off the computer and hook the original hard drive back up in it's original spot and the slave as a slave or on another ide cable. When you want to boot from it change the boot order in the bios.
When booting from the original hard drive the result will look like just another drive with files on it in Windows explorer and if you partition it with 2 partitions you will have extra space to put stuff.