Steps to physically remove a "System" Drive.

[C0BALT]

I have easyBCD 2.0
Windows 7 RC 7600

plus... currently 3 hard drives, and I'll name the useful partitions.

DISK 0 G: Healthy (BOOT, PAGE FILE, ACTIVE, CRASH DUMP, PRIMARY PARTITION)

DISK 1 a bunch of stuff, 6 partitions, none of them booting, just content etc.

DISK 2 C: Healthy (SYSTEM, ACTIVE, PRIMARY PARTITION) (IDE 200gig drive)

Disk 2 has windows XP installed on it, it is IDE and I want to take it OUT of the machine completely.
How do I make DISK 0 become THEE drive that is initally searched on bootup plus is the bootup OS (win7)

I hope this Q makes sense. thanks!

++What would even makes this better is if I could rename drive G: as drive C:

 

[Dinesh]

disk 0 and disk 2 both are bootable right?

 

[Dave76]

I have easyBCD 2.0
Windows 7 RC 7600

plus... currently 3 hard drives, and I'll name the useful partitions.

DISK 0 G: Healthy (BOOT, PAGE FILE, ACTIVE, CRASH DUMP, PRIMARY PARTITION)

DISK 1 a bunch of stuff, 6 partitions, none of them booting, just content etc.

DISK 2 C: Healthy (SYSTEM, ACTIVE, PRIMARY PARTITION) (IDE 200gig drive)

Disk 2 has windows XP installed on it, it is IDE and I want to take it OUT of the machine completely.
How do I make DISK 0 become THEE drive that is initally searched on bootup plus is the bootup OS (win7)

I hope this Q makes sense. thanks!

++What would even makes this better is if I could rename drive G: as drive C:

Welcome to Seven Forums C0BALT.

You've listed 3 physical drives, your specs say you have 4, is the 4th currently running internally?
This is important to ensure the MBR gets moved to the right HD.

You have a dual boot set up with Disk0 with Win7RC and Disk2 with XP, is this correct?

Is Win7 your default OS? On a normal installation XP would have been already installed and when you added Win7 it will become the default OS, comes up as the first on the dual boot screen.

Check in your BIOS to ensure that Disk0 is the first HD in the boot order, usually the CD/DVD or other media device will be first then the HDs.

Whenever you boot to Win7 it should be listed as Drive:C.

The Seven Forums tutorial has a step by step procedure.

How to Delete a Listed Operating System at Boot in Windows 7

If you have any MBR issues you can check this tutorial:

How to Restore the Windows 7 MBR (Master Boot Record)

Let us know if you have any questions.

 

[C0BALT]

disk 0 and disk 2 both are bootable right?
What makes a drive bootable?

As it turns out, I did simply remove the IDE drive and Windows 7 just booted up as Dave76 said, changing the BIOS to reflect which drive to look at first.

 

[Dave76]

disk 0 and disk 2 both are bootable right?

What makes a drive bootable?

As it turns out, I did simply remove the IDE drive and Windows 7 just booted up as Dave76 said, changing the BIOS to reflect which drive to look at first.

Glad that you got it removed.

A drive is made bootable by the MBR (Master Boot Record) and the OS boot files. Also must be selected in BIOS.

If your MBR is located in it's own partition or in the OS that you are keeping, then you can simply remove the drive. It's best to insure this before removing it, or just try it and see if the system will boot.

If you have any other questions on this subject, just reply here.