Dual Boot: Getting rid of C: and making E: into C:

I have this old Dell Dimension 800 desktop. I put in an extra hard drive (60gb) and partitioned it into D and E and installed a second OS (winxp pro) on it. (The original drive has 30 gbs. Ram: 512) Now the C: hasn't been functioning and it's needed for the computer to boot, as it is the Master Drive. The C: drive after a while freezes and freezes the computer. It can only be booted again when the compute is cold. It's pretty obvious that the drive is nonfunctional (probably some internal fan or heat problems). The second drive is the slave drive. I would like to remove the first hard drive altogether and make E: into the primary Master and the C: drive. Could I just remove the old drive and make the new drive into the primary Master. Would that work? Wouldn't the drive letter have to be changed? Would the computer boot? If it could boot, then I could perhaps go into the administrative section and change the drive letter to C: is that possible? Would I have to reformat the E: drive and install the OS again? How could I do that? (The original computer came with windows 98 and I changed to XP Home)

I would like some advice on this before I jump into looking for another computer. But for that C drive, the computer seems to be working fine.

 

This is just to close the above issue. I have disconnected the c drive data cable and connected the e: drive as a master drive to the controller. I booted up, but the computer, although recognized the hard drive, did not recognize the OS. So, went ahead installed the OS (of course, losing all my data, which i had previously backed up anyway). When I tried to repair the windows, the repair screen did not recognize my password on the drive, for obvious reasons. It had no access to it. That's why I had to reinstall the OS. And that worked out fine. Thanks for reading all this.

 

I guess you caught everyone sleeping. Thanks for posting your followup.