i currently developing a 8051 based embedded system which is used to interface to the hard disk. the system is supposed to read the data from the original (source) harddisk and write that data to a new (destination) hard disk. basically the system should make the exact image of the source hard disk.

1) will there be any problem if i connect both the source and destination hard disk to the same ide cable or do i need to used different ide cables?

2)suppose if i use a destination harddisk of larger size than the source hard disk ( Let's say source: 5GB and destination: 10GB).
will there be any problem if i don't fill up the unused space in the destination hard disk with any data? in this case will the hard disk still function properly.

regards