Left SSD - different driver to right?

I just noticed yesterday that though a card from my camera shows up and works with the right slot, nothing happens with the left. This is with XP having been installed on a previously Linpus version, and I'm sure I remember it working. Or have I misunderstood and it works differently. Is the left side one the one that's meant to have an operating system on it?

(Edit: With Ubuntu, which I've just reinstalled in a small partition, the opposite SD slot works. So at least I know they're not physically broken.)

Can I ask too, for booting an operating system from SD card, do its contents have to be an installed operating system as if it were a hard drive (mine has a 120 GB hd too), or should the same kind of contents boot as would be on a pen drive of, for example, Ubuntu? So far I have the latter and nothing shows up using the F12 option upon boot. Is that normal? I could never boot from my external DVD drive so I'm concerned I may have a quirky machine.

Thanks.

 

Okay, this might have been a bad card or my mistake. Both slots work with XP now, though not with the first card I'd used, and with Ubuntu the left one works in any way but the right one only works if it's plugged in before switching on, which seems to be admitted on the Ubuntu site.

I've replied to myself here because it might save someone else an hour or so of faffing who's in the same boat.

 

sorry to tell you but you cant boot from the internal sd card. THANKYOU VERRY MUCH ACER.

but you can boor from a usb card reader