Break the mirror

If you have a software mirror through disk manager, then you should leave the primary drive and remove the other drive.  Then you can boot to the primary and it will see that the mirror backup is missing.  If you want to boot to the second drive and you didn't set it up correctly in the first place...you can create a boot disk that will allow you to pick which drive you want to boot to.  
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305595

hope that helps

so then,

assuming it was set   up properly,,,,, removing any of the two drives should leave a bootable drive in place.

do i have that right?

Yes.  But not a bad idea to backup the boot.ini and other files to create a bootable floppy or cd beforehand...just in case.  Also Make sure you have a successful backup before you try anything!

i will report back...... sort of excited to see what happens...

 i think i am becoming a geek..:)

eith of the two drives did not boot.... both together did....
i reposted this question... asking for very specific instructions...

you wrote
 "If you have a software mirror through disk manager, then you should leave the primary drive and remove the other drive.  Then you can boot to the primary and it will see that the mirror backup is missing. "

i see that when i go to my computer/ manage/ diskmanagement i only see one drive...   woul dthat tell me that this is all my computer sees?