Installing XP SP2 PC hard drive in Mac

What I want to do is take the hard drive out of my PC which is already formatted with Windows XP SP2 and put it in my Mac Pro as a second bootable drive. Assume that my drive is a SATA drive (I need to check first) that is installable in the Mac. Can I do this and how without running Boot Camp to reformat the drive and going through the full Boot Camp partitioning procedure? If so, how can I just create the Mac drivers disk?
Thank you,
i-convert

You will probably need to use Windows Recovery console or repair booting from XP SP2 - as long as it is not an OEM/Dell/HP type machine specific copy.
What you might want to look into before trying to boot from your Windows SATA drive is first download and use WinClone www.twocanoes.com to backup the partition while in OS X, just in case.
All the Apple drivers you need to get started are on Leopard DVD and should auto run once you are booted into XP (might want to do Safe Boot first time). You'll also be wanting to install graphics drivers directly from ATI or nVidia afterwards.
You might also consider running XP in a VM like Parallels unless you play games and need native boot.
Vista Business/Ultimate 64-bit gives the Mac Pro full support for memory, 8-cores, and runs just fine.

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