Can You change the MBR from one hard drive to another. If so. How?

[koffeedude]

I have two 80GB hard drives. The original master (C:/) has XP Home on
it and the second (D:/) just got XP pro added to it. If I switch to
Pro and disconnect Home, no boot. I want to use the Pro and disconnect
Home and use it as a back up Drive. When I reconnect Home I want it
to be the slave and be able to boot either HD so that I can transfer
files to and from and update either or.
Presently, I can disconnect Pro and change the pins on Home and
boot it alone. That is what I want to be able to do with Pro so that
if Pro gets invaded it can't effect both drives.
Can I move the MBR from Home to Pro or is there a third party Boot
Manager that will install on Pro disk and override the MBR on Home?
All the Boot Managers that I have looked at state that they
automatically install on the primary disk, which I take to be C:/
(Home)

Thanks in Advance, koffeedude

 

[Bob Harris]

Your problem may be more than just the master boot record.

The XP family places certain key boot files on C:, even if the operating system is installed elsewhere, such as D:.

If you remove (or format) C:, then XP will not boot.

The files that must be on C:, on whatever is serving as C: today, are:

ntdetect.com

ntldr

boot.ini


Of these BOOT.INI must point to the windows installation. It can point to multiple installations and then you can choose which to boot. And, it has a provision for a default version.

One option is to make a BOOT.INI that supports both Home and Pro, then simpley select which you want. In this case, both hard drives would be aattached at all times. The XP recovery console can make such a BOOT.INI. Info about the recovery console follows:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_rec.htm



http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm



http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm (near bottom)



http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm (ISO, about number 26 in list)


If you insist on removing one hard drive, then both will need to have the above three files, and each will needs its own BOOT.INI, and the BOOT.INI files will be slightly different.