It even boots up faster with these two disks connected.

Yeah, because it doesn't sit around waiting for a nonexistent second disk to spin up. Funny, that...

In the FAQ it is recommended to install the standard (I presume the consumer) image of the newest player software for a backup scenario when the other disk fails.

That, and to make sure you've erased the "loaded-gun" builder image from the flash kernel. If you don't do this, when you insert the other disk, it too would get erased. If you had songs on there, you'd be very disappointed. This is a necessary step if you're simply adding the second disk.

Yes, there are ways to make sure your first disk doesn't get hurt without adding player software to the second disk. I just needed to keep the instructions simple so that no one accidentally erased the music on their first disk.

But in case of failure(s) this will eventually affect your MP3 collection on that disk itself, won't it? So what is the point of installing any player software on the second harddisk, since in case of a failure you will still need to open up the player and swap the faulty disk and (most probably) lose sync of the FIDS.

Nah, it works out fine. I had my primary disk fail once, and the fact that the player software was on the second disk was a godsend. The FIDs were confused, true. It only listed the songs that were on the second disk, and any playlists that expected to find songs on drive0 came up as "changed" in Emplode. But at least the player worked and I was able to do stuff (like drop to a shell and try to diagnose the problem with the other drive) that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

Second question, if I should install the developer image on the second disk, does that have different consequences than installing the consumer version? Third and last question, if a newer software version emerges, should the second disk be updated with the new version as well?

That's all totally up to you. It's not critical either way. In my case, I had a two-versions-back Developer on disk two when disk one failed, and it was all OK.

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Tony Fabris