Is it possible to set things up so that...

You are booting off of and running applications on an SSD, but everything else is saved to a different internal HDD for storage? That is, the OS is on the SSD, but the desktop and whatnot is tied to the other HDD?

Does that make sense? Basically I am wondering if it is possible to boot from a smallish SSD and not have to worry about writing to it and then having to transfer files later.