My computer (a dual Athlon on an K7D motherboard) is setup on four bootable partitions. The partitions are:

1) DOS Ver. 5
2) Windows 2000
3) Slackware Linux on a SCSI disc
3) Slackware Linux on an IDE disc

The DOS partition is for doing hardware related stuff, e.g. electronics projects, reflashing a DVD drive, etc.

The Windows 2000 partition is for running Windows shrinkwrap and playing card games.

I do all my code development work on the SCSI Linux partition.

I do all my trusted e-mail from the IDE Linux partition and backup to that partition.

I have a reliability technique that I call "cross booting". I have a master boot record on the IDE disk that can boot all other partitions. I also have a master boot record on the SCSI disk that can boot all other partitions. When I do code development on the SCSI disk, I always backup to the IDE disk. Under this system the SCSI disk and SCSI controller can have a full meltdown but my system is still bootable from the IDE master boot record. Likewise, the IDE disk and IDE controller on the motherboard can also fail but my system is still bootable. I can shift from one master boot record to another at the BIOS level during the first step of bootup. This technique has the fringe benefit of immunizing me from single point screwups in Linux system administration. If I screwup one partition due to a sysadmin error, I simply reboot the system on the other partition, mount the screwed up partition and then copy over a working configuration from the clean partition to the damaged operating system. The Windows 2000 and DOS partition systems are also useful for unravelling difficult hardware issues (typically if hardware will not work under DOS then it is physically broken).

The dual CPU aspect along with a SCSI controller causes the system to run very smoothly. The system can be hammering the hard disk with multiple CPU intensive jobs running in background but the cursor and console operation remains fluid smooth. Also one CPU can crap out and the system will still boot.

Gary