I just had my computer's harddrives reformatted and had the old data reinstalled on the slave drive. I have two 40 GB Hard Drives. The "C" drive contains only "Hidden Files." The "F" drive (slave) contains Windows and all of my old data files. My question is this: For safety / backup and restoral sakes, which drive is best to store all of my data files on? When adding new software applications, should I install them on the C drive or F drive?

I've always been a supporter of keeping as much off the OS drive as possible. I keep my installed programs, favorites, email files, my documents, etc. on the D drive. You can even toss the swap file and temporary internet files on another drive if you wish. The less writing to the OS drive, the less the chance of it getting corrupted.

In the old days, when hard drives were really slow, it was preferable to keep the OS on the C drive near the head end, which had a faster read/write time. With the modern drives today, this difference is negligible, so put whatever you want wherever you want. I've got my Win2K install on G, and it runs great.