Curiosity: 2 Hard Drives, 2 OS's

(This is on the boundary between hardware and software)

I just finished upgrading my computer with an SSD, and swapping out my old HDD for a 2 terabyte drive.

I was thinking about formatting my old 320 gb HDD, but decided I would keep it as a "fail safe" since it already has windows 7 on it, along with files etc.(just tossing it in a drawer).

My curiosity is this: If I had decided to wipe the old HDD (320gb), could I have just plugged it in, booted normally and wiped it through windows? I guess the main question is: What affect does having two hard drives, both with windows 7 on them, wired in at the same time when you boot?

My boot priority through BIOS simply targets USB to HDD to CD, but doesn't specify which drive. Would it have automatically recognized 2 separate Windows installations and given me the choice between the two? (ie: an automatic dual boot)

Thanks in advance.

should bring up 2 windows to boot from when loading out of bios. i guess it is possible... never tried but worked fine with xp. they are on 2 drives so they should not conflict.

having 2 hard drives both with windows 7 on them will be fine.

The NTBS boot loader is different on vista/windows 7 and i am sure its the same with 8 than it is on XP. so trying to have a hard drive with windows xp and windows 7 will not work. due to the bootloaders are different. There is however a way to make it work but google will be your friend on that. it is not the standard way.

May be a stupid question but could we load the 2nd hard drive off VMworkstation? i know it uses virtual disks for data storage but lets say we wanted to run 2 windows software that needed 2 OS to run correctly but only dual monitor and 1 tower.

Would be interesting to know for future reference if anyone has anything to add.