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Easiest way to make a bootable hd into a NON bootable hd

I have recently replaced my C drive with a new drive.  I wish to temporarily keep my original C drive in the machine until I can transfer some files. What is the easiest way for me to render the original disk to a NON bootable state without destroying anything else?
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Dr. Klahn

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I'm presuming it's a recent PC and all sata ?

Take the cables from your dvd rom and stick them in hdd

The PC wil boot off the new hdd and will see the other as an additional drive

You man have to take ownership of the user to see the contents of the old c drive
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Experts, one of your suggestions I feel confident will work just fine. Thanks for helping!
Go to the windows drive, like this on the old hard disk.

C:\windows and rename it like this C:\windows.old

it will not boot
@nattygreg

That looks interesting.  Will the boot process then switch to another disk or will it just hang there?
If the computer has 2 drive slot it will default to the usable one,but you should try it sometime.
@dbrunton
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Member_2_231077

Deleting or renaming files will certainly stop it booting but the system won't magically try to boot from a different disk just because it started but failed to complete booting from the first one. You would have to hack boot.ini or use bcdedit to make it load the OS from a different disk. Far easier to use one of thee BIOS/hardware suggestions above.
just disconnect the cables to the drive !
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