How to make 2nd OS 9 internal HD bootable??

Question

To try to make a long story short:
1) In 2004 I bought an used G3 Beige desktop, which has 2 ATA hard drives, 1 GB and 4 GB. (I think they're IBM.)
2) The smaller has OS 9.2; the larger had ExPostFacto 10.3 Panther. They booted separately; that Panther did not have OS 9 as an "environment".
3) After a few months, Panther died of a kernel panic; but the OS 9 was still fine. Later I bought an used G4 Graphite with Tiger, and an OS 9.2 Classic Environment, but unsatisfactory for much of my OS 9 work.
4) I want to keep the G3 Beige as an emergency spare, and because I do a lot of work in OS 9. However, after 30 months of trouble-free use, the 1 GB drive began to flash a question mark. Disk First Aid, and Norton Disk Doctor both said it was unfixable.
5) If the 1 GB is dead, so be it. Therefore, I reformatted the 4 GB drive, and installed OS 9.2. Installation was successful; however, it gave me the "no boot partition found" or some such message upon restart.
6) So I tried to fix the 1 GB using Disk Warrior, and voila, it was back in business, with the 4 GB OS 9 available and usable on its desktop. (I don't know how these 2 drives relate: I suppose the 4 GB is a "slave drive" of the ailing 1 GB? But I still can't boot from the 4 GB. I believe at the moment, upon startup, it tries to boot from the 4 GB, then defaults to the 1 GB.)
7) That would have been OK, except that, since returning from its grave, the 1 GB has been steadily leaking hard drive space to parts unknown; about 800 MB are accounted for, and 200 MB can't be found by Sherlock. After some offloading, I had as much as 40 MB to spare; I turned off virtual memory; I emptied all the cache I could find; but if there is a crash, space goes down to a few kb, or zero. More offloading; free space for a day or two; then it's gone. (There is a "Damaged Items" folder of 1 GB left behind by Disk Warrior, but I haven't tried to delete that one yet. Nor could I optimize the drive with Disk Warrior, because it said it needed 4 megs of contiguous HD space. In fact, Disk Warrior may not even have finished its new directory, for the same reason.)
SO: BOTTOM LINE QUESTION: How can I make the 4 GB the main bootable drive, and sidestep the 1 GB; and/or, is there anything I can do to make the 1 GB straighten up and fly right? (There is even room for a third HD in that Beige.)
TIA.

Answer 1

You said, "(I don't know how these 2 drives relate: I suppose the 4 GB is a "slave drive" of the ailing 1 GB?"
Those two drives share the same cable. One is ID=1, which, in a holdover from earlier drives is referred to as "Slave", The other is ID=0, which is referred to as "Master". Neither drive exerts any sort of control over the other. The "Master" drive used to do the address decode for the slave, and give it the go-ahead.
Which Drive your Mac looks to for booting is controlled by Startup Disk Control Panel. Set the startup Disk there, and you may have fewer problems.
From the Emergency Handbook, issued with the original iMac G3"
Re-bless the System Folder:
If your computer is not recognizing the system software, the System Folder may need to be “re-blessed.” This helps the computer recognize which System Folder to use.
1 Start up your computer from the softwareinstall CD. SeeChapter3, “Starting Up From a CD.”
2 Open the "System Folder" (On the Hard Drive).
3 Double-click the System suitcase.
4 After the System suitcase opens, close the suitcase and System Folder windows and restart your computer.
If this doesn’t work, then try the following:
1 Drag the System suitcase and Finder out of the "System Folder".
2 Close the "System Folder".
3 Drop the System suitcase and Finder back into the closed "System Folder".