well thats a chunky title.

My situation:
i have a dual install of XP on my laptop [as of yesterday]
the drive is partitioned 100gb drive (C), 20gb drive (E).
each partiton contains an installation of XP.

Desired outcome:
when i boot to the first installation (C), partition (E) should not be readily accessable, this is easily achieved using the disk management utility by removing its drive letter.
When i boot to the second installation (E), partition (C) should not be readily accessable, this is possible using tweakUI and choosing not to display the partition in MY COMPUTER, however typing "C:\" brings up the contents of the partition. its drive letter remains intact, and as such is "addressable".

Problem
i cannot remove the Drive letter of (C) because it is the SYSTEM VOLUME,
i understand this to mean that it has files such as boot.ini and a few other important files on it, and must be accessable at all times.


Proposed solution:
to reformat the HD and create 3 partitions instead of 2
a very small partiton for system volume
plus the two boot partitions.

Question: {finally}
is it possible to create a small partition {perhaps a few MB} and tell
xp installation to use this as system volume, but not to install XP to it?

or if the above is not possible
is it possible to Transfere the Job of System volume to a different partition
after the installation


i hope i have stated this correctly, i'm new to the dual booting thing and have only discovered what a SYSTEM VOLUME is earlier today!!
all inputs appreciated
Thanks Jim.