Installing rh 9 on empty hard drive

I am newbie. I messed up with one hd and could not dual boot. result. I had to format the hd.
Now to be onsafer side I bought another hard drive.
I have now 2 hdds.
1.80gb-windows xp with 4 logical drives 20 gb each.working fine
2. empty- 20 gb.
I wish to install rh 9. pesonal desktop.
I hope to know. the step by step guidance as to how should I proceed with 20 gb drive so that I donot spoil my windows disk again.
Is the dualboot compulsory Or I can use different disks with different os.
will I have to make the linux disk primary etc.?

waiting with deep thanks to all the members.

lngmn7

I had messed my system by installing linux unknowningly. But then, with some reading over the web, and reading different things about installing linux helped me.
Now, I have only a single hdd and I have windows 2000 and redhat linux 9.0 installed.
Actually, frankly speaking, you can install linux directly on your 80 GB hard disk with having the primary partition resized. However, if you have XP on the NTFS primary partition, then resizing is a risk. I haven't installed RH9 on a second hard disk and really dont know how to do it.

However, if you have free space in your 80 GB partition in you primary partittion then may be I can provide you a step by step guidance.

Hoping to get details....

I have never used RH9. But, it should be like most other distros, in that when you install it and point it to the partition that you want to install it on. It should play nice, and set up a dual boot with windows.

I have worked with FC1,2, and 3, and all of them dual-booted with Windows with no trouble.
Btw, just a suggestion, but you should go with the Fedora project as Redhat no longer supports the personal distros, except through Fedora.
There are also spinoffs of Fedora/Redhat even. Fox Linux, Lormalinux, and Aurox. Haven't tried Lormalinux yet, but Fox and Aurox are good.
And these are still supported.

There are probably others that I am not mentioning.

thanks!
from where I can download fedora ? is it free like rh? and I understand it is a very huge download as such from which source to get in India.

lngmn7

I have all the Fedora distro's, but i still use RH9. They are all free downloads from Red Hat's site, but there are also many mirrors. Try www.linuxiso.org

They are big downloads though. Every distro is at least one full 700MB CD. RH distros are typical three. There are also many distributors of CD-ROMs if you don't have a high speed internet connection. You can buy them at stores for very low price.