Need Help on Removing Grub (Again)

[RD Lawrence]

I apologize in advance if this topic has been beaten to death.  I've
reviewed at least 100+ articles on usenet and haven't found a
satisfactory answer for a recurring problem.

Under the heading "How to Uninstall GRUB from my hard disk drive?", the
FAQ states that there "is no concept uninstall in boot loaders, because
if you uninstall a boot loader, an unbootable machine would simply
remain."   This isn't always true.

Imagine a working system with three drives: hd0, hd1, and hd2 with grub
and linux installed on (hd1,1).  For various reasons, the user does
*not* want to install grub in the mbr of hd0.  The user adds a fourth
drive to the system (hd3) and wants to use it to install a linux system
that will ultimately replace the linux install on hd1.  However, he
wants to retain the redundant linux partition on hd1 for reasons of
safety.  He can install grub on the new disk (hd3) but this won't have
much impact since hd1 will be first in line at boot time. Perhaps I'm
mistaken but it seems to me that the ideal solution would be to install
a boot loader on hd3 after *REMOVING* the boot loader from hd1.
Removing the old grub bootloader DOES NOT result in an unbootable
system.  Rather, it allows the user to boot the system that he prefers.

In briefly reviewing previous discussions on this list and on usenet,
I've come across the suggestion to use DOS fdisk /mbr.  I'm not sure
that this would work in the aforementioned scenario, and in any case, it
seems a bit lame to fall back on DOS in order to remedy a flaw in linux
software.

Do a search through the usenet archives on google and you'll turn up a
gezillion posts asking how to remove grub.  The standard replies are:
"Why would you want to?" and "Use DOS fdisk /mbr".   Neither of these
replies will adequately resolve the problem outlined above.   Could
someone suggest another solution???

It seems to me that it would be easy enough for someone familiar with
disk geometry (not me :-)) to add an argument to grub (--erase)
permitting grub to be cleanly removed from an MBR and a partition boot
record.   Alternatively, 'dd' could probably do the trick.  Could some
kind soul recommend the proper lengths and offsets?  Comments?
Suggestions?

--
RD Lawrence
504-443-5000