I am a learn-as-i-go type of person thanks to Radified I decided to put a scsi drive in my box with an ide drive.  I am running xp home and using an adaptec 2940 card for the scsi drive.  I would like to move the system files and program files to the scsi drive as advocated by Rad.  I figure I can use a back-up and restore utility on removable media to get everything over to the scsi drive which is in and functioning well (I have no system disk for clean install).  But I have two questions:

1) is this a smart configuration with xp?
2) if so, after the files are restored on the hard drive, how do I get the windows to recognize it as the start up drive?

which drive did you get?

if it's not a 15K-rpm spindle, it might not be worth the effort.

you might have some trouble after moving the operating system to the SCSI drive .. especially if the SCSI takes a drive letter other than C.

Cuz then your OS will be on a drive other than C, but the registry pointers will still be pointing to C.

To get around this, you can:

A. do a clean install to the SCSI. This is the best and most reliable way, but a (time-consuming) pain.

B. Image the drive to CD, DVD or external drive:

http://ghost.radified.com/

Then shutdown the badboy, disconnect all the hard drives

Connect the SCSI, and configure it to boot first in the mobo BIOS.

then restore the image to the SCSI from the CD, DVD or external drive. If you use external drive, don't plug it in until the very end, when it's needed.

Reboot and say a prayer.  

If it works, shut back down and connect the old drive.

Boot up with a floppy or bootable CD/DVD and reformat the old drive prior to letting it boot to Windows. You will lose all data on the old drive when you reformat it.. But this shouldn't be a problem, cuz all your info should now be on the SCSI.

For info about bootable CD/DVDs:

http://nightowl.radified.com/bootcd/bootcdintro.html

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1119240262

The drive (Seagate 7200) and card are pulled from a retiring Mac - it was a great drive and expensive in its day, but is only a 7200.

I will heed the advice and just use it as storage rather than open up a potential can of worms.

Thanks alot for the advice.