When you format the disk, don’t write a boot loader. You may have to wipe the first part of the disk/media if you already have the boot loader installed.
Basically wipe the first part of the disk:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx count=10
Run fdisk, create the partition, but don’t write the boot loader:
fdisk /dev/hdx
dinit, install, etc…
The bios should try to load the active parition by default. It has been a while since I did this and you may have to write something as a boot loader. I don’t recall exactly, so use the above steps with caution.
The answer is yes, you can eliminate the question, but the details are a little murky…