Copy MBR and OS from two different HDs to a new one

[Hom Tanks]

Hi gurus,

Because of a variety of reasons, I have ended up with the following configuration:

*Disk A contain MBR with menu for booting into Win2K and WinXp. It also contains Win2K installation
*Disk B contains WinXp installation

I just came to know about this when I recently tried to upgrade disk B containing WinXp to a bigger one. When I removed disk A and tried to boot WinXP, it wouldn't boot. If I remove disk B and leave disk A in, it boots and I'm able to get into WIn2k (ofcourse not to XP cos thats on the other disk).

My question is:

Is there a way to copy the MBR on disk A and the XP OS on disk B into the new disk C such that I can boot disk C independently on its own and get into XP ? If this is not possible, what are the option s I have beside reinstalling WinXp all over again on disk C?

Thanks and lot in advance to anyone who tries to help out,
H

 

[RealBlackStuff]

If you try to copy A-MBR to to B-XP, to put B as master/bootdisk in another PC, forget it.

Within the same PC, there's no need for it.
Just image/clone the B-drive (XP) onto the new C-drive, and put C in B's place.
You could then format the old B and use it for something else.

 

[Hom Tanks]

Thanks for your reply.

I want to put the drive in the same PC but really want C to be the boot drive as
both A, B are slower drives compared to C. So how would I copy A MBR onto C ? I have Norton Ghost on my XP - if I try to make a copy of B onto C, would that copy the relevant MBR entry from A onto C ?

Thanks,
H

 

[Nodsu]

Even if you managed to copy the MBR.. The Windows installation thinks it is on D: (or whatever) since C: is the Win2k installation. Now, if you boot that Windows from C: (because that's what the boot partition will show up as), all hell will break loose. You are better off reinstalling Windows or doing as RBS said.

 

[kathe]

There is a free disk copy tool - EASEUS Disk Copy 1.0. High-speed sector by sector disk copy software for hard disk.