I'm about to build a pc pretty soon. I have some questions about setting up the hard drive. I'll be using windows xp. I have a sata hard drive(250 gig) and an ide hard drive(160 gig).

How do i make the the sata hard drive the primary?

Should the ide hard drive be by itself? Like don't connect a slave device to it?

Is the Windows Xp formatting utility good enough to format both hard drives?

How should I partition my hard drive?

Should I use Ntfs?

Sorry for all the questions

1) In BIOS set first boot device SATA. Note, this is after you load your OS. Don't forget to load your SATA drivers by hitting F6 when prompted.

2) IDE should be by itself.

3) Yes, the XP formatting will be fine.

4) First partition should be 10Gb. This is plenty for your OS and any future updates. One 40Gb for programs and storage for small files. 2-100Gb partitions one for large programs like games. The other for large file storage like vids, pics, and audio. The 160 I would set up as 2-80Gb partitions for additional storage.

5) NFTS is more secure than FAT32.