"tradermj" <tradermj@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:61571B6B-7D14-48F5-A9EE-90B8C6CBC526@microsoft.com...
> I have an external hard drive that is NTFS formatted. I need to make this
> drive bootable without reformatting and deleting all the data. There used
to
> be format or sys commands to do this but I cannot find a way to do this in
XP.
>

I assume that
a) You're going to make this disk an internal disk, and
b) It will be your primary master disk
c) This disk contains a working version of WinXP on its
active partition.

If so then you can do this to make it bootable:
- Boot the machine with your WinXP CD
- Select Repair, then Recovery Console
- Type these commands
fixboot
fixmbr
exit