Why is my secondary HD acting as a system drive?

[cutter]

So I have this old IDE HD that I wanted to act as a backup drive. However, when I installed XP on my new SATA HD, I think my old HD is being used as a system drive too. When I go to computer management, it shows my SATA drive as the "Healthy (boot)" but it also shows my old IDE drive as "Healthy (system)".

So my question is, is XP using the IDE drive as part of the system and thus slowing down the overall performance of my computer?

If its not slowing it down, I don't care. I'd rather it be (active) rather than say (system) but if its not slowing down my overall performance I don't care.

 

[danmarhk]

As far as I know, the booting drive may not be the system drive.
The booting drive holds the MBR and records the priority of activating different operating systems.
The system drive is the partition holding the operating system.
The problem is, I am not sure what is meant by "Healthy (boot)" and "Healthy (system)".

 

[cutter]

Yeah, danmarhk, I still haven't figured out the difference either from (boot) and (system).

But I decided to take out the old IDE and start from scratch with the new SATA alone so all is good now. Thanks!

 

[rook]

Did the old IDE drive have a copy of windows on it?