I have a system that has 2 drives. I had Xandros on one and Mandriva on the other. I have stopped using Xandros and want to use the drive it was on for storage. Mandriva's bootloader is on the mbr of that drive. In MCC in the boot section it lists grub on /dev/hda. Can I change it to hdb and have it boot from the drive it's installed on and then set up my other drive for storage? Thanks.

i am alittle confused... are you wanting to leave the drives where they are phisically and boot into mandrake on the other drive by default adn format the hda? or switch the drives phisically and then install grub onto the used-to-be hdb, which is then hda?

i could respond to both but it would help if you just let me know what it is you would rather do.. either one can be done. just one is harder than the other.

Yes, the used to be hda which had Xandros on it I want for storage, and hdb, which has Mandriva on it would become hda, I guess. I'm confused myself now. In the boot section it lists grub on hda.
What I did was install Mandriva on hdb when I was using Xandros. I then decided to move Mandriva to hda, the other drive. I had trouble with the install so I left Mandriva on hdb where it was, I never changed the installation. So I assume it is still booting from the other drive.
I pulled the jumper off the drive that Xandros was on, the one I want for storage and Mandriva wouldn't boot. I put the jumper back on and it booted so I assume the mbr is still on the drive that Xandros was on.

Easiest option is to re-install grub to the MBR of hda, and the stage files into the Manriva disk; say / or /boot.
Fix up grub.conf and you're away.
Then you can have the partitions on hda. Saves having to screw around with fstab and such.

There are better solutions, but there's a bit more (cleanup) work involved.

Thanks for the reply. I think grub IS on the mbr of hda. I'm wanting to put it on hdb. I ran through the "upgrade" install and tried to put it on hdb but it didn't work.

Boot-loaders *have* to be in the MBR of the primary boot disk as assigned in the BIOS.
This is usually hda.

Your install to hdb probably worked, you just can't get to it.
Make what is currently hdb the boot disk in the BIOS and see if it boots. You will have problems as I alluded to above, as that disk will now be hda, and fstab will be wrong.
They can all be worked through - think of it as a learning opportunity

Thanks.

I never got that to work so I think I'll try to move Mandriva from the older smaller drive it's on (hdb) to the new larger drive (hda). How is that accomplised? Thanks.