M17x - Second Hard drive for storage and not in RAID

I've never owned a laptop that has a second hard drive.
Here's my question. The M17x that I am ordering comes with the usual 250GB 7200 RPM.
However, I already have an 80GB Intel X25-M SSD on my current laptop.

When my M17x arrives, I'll put it into the M17x and make the SSD the primary HD where everything gets installed onto, etc.
In addition, I want to keep the 250GB 7200RPM in the secondary HD slot JUST for storage (Like an external Hard drive -but an internal one).

I don't want the computer to access the secondary hard drive unless I need to transfer a file from the secondary to the primary.

** Basically I want the M17x to think that the second hard drive is an external hard drive.

Is this possible? Or will the M17x automatically try to make the two hard drives into RAID?

Do people do this all the time or will this present me with a conflict?

 

*facepalm*

no it will work just fine as previously mentioned. It's currently how i have mine setup

 

It will work fine, just wipe it and format it to NTFS, and add your files as usual. It will show up as another letter drive in My Computer

 

Does the the M17x, by default, recognize the first hard drive as primary?
Should there then be anything/files on the second hard drive if I bought the M17x pre configured in RAID?

 

if its raid 1 it will be a exact copy of the other if its raid 0 then it wil be something can't remember but it won't boot with out a reinstall of vista

 

There are three options for RAID

1. Off (This is the one you want)
2. Raid 1 - Second harddrive is an exact duplicate of your first hard drive
3. Raid 0 - Two hard drives acting as one hard drive, data is split between both drives to speed up performance.

Both Option 2 and Option 3 require you to have two of the exact same drives installed in both bays.

Yes, The computer, by default will use the 1st HD bay as the primary drive when you have Raid Disabled.