How to disable OS (Win7x64) on secondary HDD?

[SFAM]

I originally had an internal 250gb hard drive in my laptop, that included the OS (Win7x64). I recently upgraded that HDD to an internal 1TB drive, and all was fine. Then I discovered a DVD case for a 2.5" HDD, that I put my old 250gb HDD into. Initially this HDD/DVD combo was recognized by the system and all worked as expected. But after a day or two I noticed some odd behavior (can't remember what it was now), and I remembered hearing years ago that your system won't be happy with 2 OSs present, even though I had disabled the boot capabilities of the DVD drive through the BIOS boot chain setting.

My question is; how can I easily disable the OS on the old 250gb drive in order to access the files on that disk without odd behavior, but I want to keep the OS on the 250gb drive so I can use it as an emergency back-up boot drive, should the need arise?

Seems to me if I put certain files (but which ones!?) in a zip compressed folder, then when I wanted to use the old drive as a boot disk I could just decompress the zipped folder, and be ready to go!

Any thoughts on this process/idea would be greatly appreciated!

 

[velocityg4]

Having two separate hard drives with an OS present won't cause any issues except setting the boot order in the BIOS. Even on the same drive with separate partitions it isn't an issue. Beyond setting up a boot manager. The only time two OS are a problem is if they are on the same partition (excepting Virtual Machines).

If you want to just use the drive for files and clear the OS. Temporarily remove them from the drive. Format it then put them back. If you want to reclaim all space. Use Disk Management to delete all partitions and format the drive for one partition.
Detailed Guide Disk Management: http://www.digitalcitizen.life/how-manage-your-disks-using-disk-management-utility