Dual Booting Off Of a 2nd HDD With Recovery Partition?

Ok i got a new dell pc. Win XP Disc Management tells me i have:

63MB filesystem type FAT (EISA COFIGURATION )
145.95gb filesystem type NTFS (System)
3.00gb filesystem type FAT32 (unknown)

I think this is as i can push Ctrl-F11 during bootup to recover my XP

However, I want to install linux by buying a 2nd HDD to put it on but not screw up my XP recovery option. This is a problem as the recovery prompt lives in the MBR and would be wiped by GRUB.

I dont think GRUB can boot the recovery stuff as it screwed up my recovery on another pc of mine, an IBM Thinkpad. So what could I do to boot linux instea dof having it in te MBR, i cant boot from a floppy as i dont have one?