debian installation

[Ned]

Hi all,

I installed debian with speakup in my classroom successfully after going through the process once with my instructor. It went so smoothly to the point of being incredible; I mean that was the first ever OS I have ever installed on my own.

Now, you guess, I want to do the same thing here at home on my own machine, and that's where my questions start:
I have XP Pro on my 40-gig hd which is not partitioned, and I decided to buy one more hd on which I want to install Linux. That 2nd hd would be a slave, so how do I tell the debian to install itself onto that hd and to boot up from it? Is this the best solution? I could get rid of everything that is on the current hd and install Linux only, but in that case, will linux support scanner on which I depend so much?

I need to get this done asap!

Bytheway, is there anybody willing to sell a hardware dec talk synth?

Many thanks in advance!
Ned