NT Loader - Load onto another drive without reinstalling XP?

[Steve K]

When I installed XP Pro, I only had my SCSI drive in the
system.

Since then I have added a SATA RAID array and an IDE
drive, and now booting direct from the SCSI drive have
become a problem (BIOS limitations.)

If I were to install XP now, it would install certain
files to the IDE drive - ie NT Loader, or at least
something that allows NT Loader to be called from the
SCSI drive.

My question is - can I setup my IDE drive with whatever
is needed to trigger booting from the SCSI drive? I'm
sick of messing with GRUB and LILO so I figured I'd go
with the way XP does it when you install it.

I don't fancy the idea of reinstalling windows right now,
but this is nearing my last option.

Thanks,
Steve.

 

[Kent W. England [MVP]]

If you install XP from the CD with your current configuration, your NT
boot loader files will remain on the SCSI drive which will remain as
drive C:. XP will end up on drive D: or some other letter. You will not
be able to remove the SCSI drive in this configuration. boot.ini will be
updated to add your new boot instance.

If you simply want to add the IDE drive to your SCSI configuration,
format it with the Drive Management console. It will simply be a drive
with data on it, not Windows and not the NT boot loader files.

You could remove the SCSI drive and install XP fresh on the IDE drive or
you could clone the SCSI drive to the IDE drive. In this case, you need
a third-party boot manager or you need to change the boot device in BIOS
to select your boot drive, but each instance of XP will be on drive C:
and each drive will have its own copy of the NT boot loader files.