Removing MBR off old HDD

Hi,
After Cloning an old 14GB disk into an 80GB disk, I unpluged the old drive.
Now, I'm looking for a way to remove it's MBR in order to reconnect it for future use without disturbing proper operation of the new cloned drive,(two identical operating drives on the same machine).
Any idea?

 

Hello SmartBoyIti,

If you merely want to get rid of the retained DiskID rather than fdisk'ing and formatting it then temporarily disconnect the new drive and reconnect the old one as the system master. Boot from a Windows 98 Startup floppy and issue the command fdisk /mbr. This will overwrite the extra 4 bytes containing the DiskID that Windows XP's fixmbr command can't reach. Check out <Method #3 (Kawecki's Trick)> in this excellent article by Dan Goodall. When done, reconnect the new drive as Disk 0 (system master) and the old one as Disk 1.

If you haven't got access to a Win 98 Startup floppy, send me your email address via a Forum Private Message (click on my User Name and select "Send a Private Message to Menorcaman") and I'll send you a bootable ISO image that can be burnt to CD.

Regards

 

Hi Menorcaman,
Thanks for your prompt response.
I have the 98 floppy with FDISK, and I'll do exactly as you suggested.
Thanks again,
SmartBoyIti.

 

You are probably going to use the old disk as a storage drive in the computer and will be now booting from the cloned new 80GB drive aren't you? If this is true you would want to format the old drive to clear out the operating system so you can use the space for storage...or am I reading this wrong?

If the above if what you plan, the main issue with XP is to not have any other duplicate hard drives presently connected the first time you boot after a cloning, or the bootable active drive letters could be transfered and your new disk could receive a drive letter assignment other than C. If you have removed the 14GB hard drive after the cloning from the system, before re-booting, and boot the computer with the new 80GB in the 0 position, the BIOS will make it the C: drive. You could then shut down, place the old hard drive in the next position on the cable (If using IDE) and it would be in position 1. Boot again, and since the BIOS has found the new 80GB drive in position 0 before, and assigned it drive letter C, it will not change the old drive back to C but will assign it another letter even if the same drive ID#s are intact on it and it will not be 'looking' for a MBR because it has already found one and booted from it. That is why you can change your CDROM to boot first before the C active hard drive, and it will boot as the BIOS finds a bootable disk before it 'finds' the C drive MBR.

You could then format and re-partition the old drive to set it up as your storage drive, leaving its old MBR and the Disk ID intact and should have no problems as I see it. Menorcaman's method will work for you also, but I just see it as an extra cautionary step that is not really necessary, it you follow the above instructions. I'm assuming of course you are leaving the drive installed to utilize it for storage or backup.

The main issue is not to have the two hard drives in the computer after re-booting after the cloning...then you will end up with your new 80GB boot drive being assigned a letter other than C because of the drive ID#'s.

You will probably want to use XP's disk management tools to re-assign drive letters to some of the other drives if they were changed in the process...all other drive letters can be renamed, only the C (active boot drive) cannot.

...Allen