adding 2nd hard drive

If you are only going to use the drive for data backup, you might want an external drive instead of an internal.

For an internal drive:

Set the jumper on the existing drive for master with slave present.

Set the jumper on the new drive as slave.

UNLESS you have a cable select cable, then set both jumpers to cable select and connect the cable as labeled for master and slave.

When you boot up, enter BIOS setup, and make sure that the new drive is detected properly.

Once Windows loads, go to Administrative Tools, Disk Manager.
Right click on the new drive, and partition as desired.
Then, format the new drive(s).

You do not need to install Windows or any programs onto the drive.

For backing up your data, open Windows Explorer, and drag your data folders to the new drive. Windows will copy the data.

As to installing Windows 98 on the new drive:
Yes, it is possible, but difficult.
If you simply run setup from the W98 CD, the installer will get rid of some files on the C: drive that are required for XP to load.

What I would do, is install W98 onto the drive with a spare drive in the place of your XP drive. Making sure that Windows installs to the D: drive.

Then, after you swap your XP drive back in, you need to set things up for dual booting.

You can manually edit the boot.ini file to add the W98 boot information.
Or, you can install a boot manager.

For information on boot.ini commands, check out the boot.ini page at www.systeminternals.com

Chas

1)To setup the drive as Master/Slave use the diagram on the top of the drive,it will give the pin setting to use.

You can run a different operating system,which will be a dual boot,since you already have Windows XP,if sharing the files or foldersyou will need to have a fat32 file system,W98 will not be able to access NTFS

The second hard drive does not have to be loaded with applications if only to be used for data backup,use the hard drive software to partition and format the drive

Why not just install your 2nd HD as the Secondary Master? Enter "Setup" after restarting your machine, let BIOS detect it, and save the settings and exit.
You will then neeed to format it.
I would recommend creating separate directories (or folders) on the drive, so that you can save various types of files in the appropriate grouping.