Upgrading to W7 - two hard drives ?

[Grimmbro]

I hope someone can give me some advice about an idea that I have which involves upgrading to W7 from XP. I ran the MS scan of my PC to determine which software will work with W7 and which would not and as expected several applications which are old were flagged as those that are not compatible. Getting an upgrade to the current version for those applications is out of the question because the upgrades that have followed the versions I am running, have been heartily panned by other users as worse so I want to stick with the versions I have. (In case you're wondering, I have Nero 6 and Paperport 9, both terrific programs). The idea I had was to install W7 on a new hard drive and make it the "C" drive and then keep the current "C" drive with XP on it and make it the "D" drive. Then when I want to use the old programs I could go into the bios while booting up and change the "D" drive to be the boot drive. And then back again when I want to boot up into W7. I have asked some friends about this and have received differing opinions on the idea. I thought I would pose this question to the most reliable source I know (you guys) and see what you have to say. Thanks for taking the time to read my question. By the way, this is a home built PC that I assembled so I have a reasonable understanding of the hardware, in case that helps.

[glc]

Install the second drive and boot with the Win 7 DVD, and install it on the new drive (use Custom (advanced) install). You will wind up with a dual boot menu, and each drive should be "C" within its OS. You won't have to mess with the bios.

[Grimmbro]

thanks glc, you answered questions I have had before, and once again your reply is appreciated. I will try it as you describe.