Sorry about the length of this, but I reckon it's necessary to provide
a full picture and hence get some much-needed help please.

Following my previous posts, I have now installed a new 200GB HD to
replace the 60GB one with 4 bad blocks, as recommended.

However, although I'm sending this from a working 3-drive system, the
2-drive configuration I'm trying to achieve resolutely refuses to
work. That's after slogging at it for 3 days without success. I'd
hoped to sort it without returning here for more help, but I have to
admit defeat for the time being!

I won't attempt to describe all the details of the various
combinations I've tried. Very briefly:

- The original 2 identical 60GB disks both had a partition of about
12GB containing my XP Home OS (and around half of my program files),
and I could boot to either. That gave me a feeling of security, and
I'd like to continue that. (I also have an *image* of my OS, and I aim
to update that reasonably often, as another security measure.)

- I eventually succeeded in getting OS copies also into partitions on
the 2 identical 200GB HDs. (That's the 200GB added a few weeks ago via
an extra PCI card; and the latest identical 200GB, bought as
replacement for the faulty 60GB.)

- I am able to boot up from each of these when that is the only drive
present, and in various 3-drive configurations, including the one I
have at present.

- For simplicity, power and noise reasons, I want to get rid of the
remaining 60GB disk.

- But that doesn't work. I get a variety of errors, depending on which
one I try to boot, including for example:
"Press a key to reboot" (then cycling repeatedly)
"NTLDR is missing..."
"Some other file or other (HAL.DLL?) is missing..."
All those are presumably symptomatic of XP not finding a bootable
partition? Yet, as I said, there *is* one, and it does work in other
circumstances.

Then, late last night, with only the 200GB disks in place (as disk 0
and disk 1), I started to get panic-generating messages like:
"A problem is preventing Windows accurately checking the licence for
this computer. Error code 0x80090006"
"Windows cannot load the user's profile but has logged you on with the
default profile for this system" (But it got no further.)

Here's what my setup is right now
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/I...entStatus1.gif

One major source of confusion for me throughout this exercise is:
which of these OSs am I 'in' right now? I think I have booted to Disk
1 Partition 1. That's the default shown in Settings Startup. It is
also consistent with what I see in boot.ini. And that's also
consistent with the XP Disk Management display showing 'boot' in that
entry. IOW, right now I'm using the OS copy that is in H. BUT then
why is Disk 0 Partition 1 called C? I thought the boot partition
automatically got re-labeled by XP to C?

OK, bottom line. I'm sorely tempted to stick with what I have now, and
just tidy up shortcuts, reorganise files and folders, etc. But it
would be good to get down to 2 drives. 400 GB should be plenty, even
with two 12GB OS partitions, and my comprehensive backup precautions.
Can the experts here suggest a safe way of achieving that please?

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK