Changing MBR to new drive.

Peacefulanimator

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Sep 21, 2011
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I have been looking around the internet trying to figure out how i can set my 500gb HDD to boot by itself without the need of this 40gb HDD. The 40gb is apparently the MBR, and the 500gb will not boot by itself unless the 40gb is present.

How can i make my 500gb the MBR, Im a bit confused so please explain or provide links that can help better educate myself on this matter.

Note: I just ordered a new SSD and it will be arriving in two days, I hope to make that drive my boot and turn the 500gb into storage. Thank you for reading and please reply!)
 
If you make sure that the new SSD is the only storage device connected when you install Windows on it, the MBR will also be on the SSD. Then you'll be able to boot from it completely independently of the other two hard drives. Check that Windows starts from the SSD without any problems, then you can add one or both of your existing hard drives to the system as you wish.

Note: all partitioned hard drives, whether boot drives or not, contain an MBR as it contains the disk ID and partition info (partition table).
 

Peacefulanimator

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Thank you very much Phil22, it makes a lot of sense now.