2 Hard Drives & 2 Operating Systems, can I use both at the same time?

Question

About 1 year ago I built my own computer and installed Windows Vista Ultimate 32-Bit.

I also installed Photoshop, Dreamweaver and lots of other applications on this hard drive.

Lets call it hard drive 1.

Today I bought a new hard drive and a new copy of Windows Vista Ultimate 32-Bit.

Lets call it hard drive 2.

My question is can I connect both hard drives 1 & 2 to my desktop computer. Then boot Vista from hard drive 2, but still

all the applications from hard drive 1, without rebooting the computer?

Sorry if this is a but confusing.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

yep but you need a boot loader

google boot loader and read a lot and maybe you can figure out which one will work best for you

( windows also have a boot loader on most recent operating system they put out for the last decade but they have some limits and you need to use the one with the most recent windows version you have as the older ones can not see the newer operating system or any linux operating systems)

oh and the boot loader needs to reside on the c drive ( in the first 1200 blocks of it)

Answer 2

no the programs will not work properly on the other hard drive they would need to be installed again on the 2 hard drive to get them to work while running that hard drive

Answer 3

the apps would need to be installed in the operating system being used , although the files could be stored on the other drive.