Question about formatting second hard drive containing second OS

Q_Ball

hey guys,

I have XP installed on my main hard disk and red hat 9 installed on a slave hard disk. I want to get rid of red hat and use the hard disk under XP. If i format the second hard drive what will happen to the MBR if its installed on the main disk?

all the best,

darren

Infini

Its not very hard. To remove the OS right click on my computer on XP and select the advanced tab. Then click settings under startup and recovery and click edit. You should get this....

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\Linux - red hat

I dont know how its rendered for a linux OS but it should come up similar to this. To remove it delete the red hat section but make sure not to damage the windows section otherwise it wont boot at all. You should get something like this...

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Make sure before you save that you hit return at the end of fastdetect so that the line Icon is flashing below the P in professional.

This should remove the boot loader section.

To format the HD, Right click My computer and select manage from the list.
Then in computer management select disk management. You should see the slave hard drive. Click on the slave HD icon and select format and you should be able to reformat the slave drive to NTFS. Hope this helps but post if anything here is wrong.

Infini

Also to note the MBR is usually stored on the Master Hard Drive so you shouldn't have a problem if you format the Slave HD unless you installed Red Hat 9 First.

Q_Ball

This is what is in the MBR looks like it should before i even edited it so yay.

When i go into disk management tho i get

"The logical disk manager service is disabled. A connection cannot be established" =/

Disk Management sometimes goes a little haywire when it detects EXT3 partitions. If you can't do anything with Disk Management, try a DOS boot disk with FDISK, but use it carefully!