Multiple start-up disks in Lion

[Kevin L.]

Hi,
I want to try out my new SSD with Lion before I completely ditch my old HD (lots of work-dependent stuff I can't chance loosing till I've fully tested on the new drive). I noticed in Lion you get multiple options at start-up if you hold down the option key (assuming you have boot camp).
My question is this: if I just drop my new SSD (preloaded with Lion) into the opti-bay via a converter, and leave my old HD in place, will I see both drives available when I hold option down at startup? In other words, if I have two Lion-loaded drives connected internally, can I just choose which drive I want to boot into using the option command, like with a boot camp or recovery partition?
Thanks!

 

[Partron22]

Sure.
And once the machine has booted, you can choose which of the two to make your usual startup disk in System Prefs - Startup Disks.

 

[Kevin L.]

Great; thanks!
I was unsure since I know you can only have one boot camp partition but when I saw the third option for the Lion recovery disk, it made me wonder if this would be possible. (I only asked first instead of just trying it because I didn't know if running two HD's with Lion installed could cause any system instability.)

 

[kevin2i]

Sure.
And once the machine has booted, you can choose which of the two to make your usual startup disk in System Prefs - Startup Disks.

It is important to pick a startup disk in preferences - otherwise the system can go on a wild goose chase (searching for network drives or something) and boot times can be long.

You can keep your snow leopard, ubuntu, lion all ready to go. Set preferences to the one you usually boot to, but hold Opt key at boot if you want something different.

Fantastic feature if you are coming from windows.