Dual boot laptop, 2 separate environments...

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Hey all. My boss is trying to push for us to be able to telecommute for a few days a week towards the end of the year. At work everyone will have a desktop machine to use while in the office, but we are responsible for our own laptop / desktop for working from home.

Here is my current setup:
Dual boot setup on my laptop after adding a new drive. I got an SSD, put Win 7 Ultimate on it, but left old drive in too, not fully backed up and moved to Windows 7 yet. With this setup, I can access BOTH drives from windows explorer from either boot.
Gaming Laptop: - Gateway P-6860FX - Intel T5550 @ 1.83 Ghz, 4GB generic memory,*
8800M GTS stock, OCZ Agility 3 60 Gig (Windows 7 Ultimate), WD 320 Gig drive (Windows Vista Home Premium)


Here is what I would like to TRY to accomplish:

• Remove 320gig WD Vista drive, possibly use it for external backup, or in my PS3.
• Purchase an additional SSD, add to 2nd hard drive bay on laptop
• Not clear yet on what company policy will be as far as having me install my own copy of Windows, or if they will use a corporate version. I have access to Microsoft Technet, so I have licensing options for all versions of Windows.
• Get dual boot set back up, with a personal drive, and a work drive, each as a completely separate environment.

Everything before this isn't a big deal, just listing for myself what needs to be done. In the end, I am looking to accomplish something very specific, but I am not sure how to accomplish it. I KNOW that I can accomplish what I want 100% if I keep each drive out of the laptop, and only connect the one that is needed, however, I would rather NOT do this.

MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE: How can I keep the PERSONAL drive from accessing the WORK drive, and vice versa?

When booted, there will be a C:\ and an E:\. Each booted drive will be C:\ when in use, and I would like it so that each boot drive is its own environment, with NO ACCESS to the other drive when booted into Windows. Right now, the only way I would know how to do this is to physically remove the drives depending on if I am using the laptop for personal or work things. This is undesirable, because eventually my belief is that the SATA connector on the hard drives, or laptop may wear and break, or fail.

 

[carnageX]

You could always encrypt the drive so you need the encryption key to access it. Could always try to remove the drive letter off of the drive as well.

 

[KSoD]

Well the easiest thing I can think of, go into Disk Management and unassign the drive letter for the other drive. That way there is no way it can access the drive cause it wont have a drive letter assigned to it.

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

doing that would have no effect on the ability to boot from each Drive, correct?

 

[KSoD]

Absolutely not. As that change would only be in effect at that time when that specific version of Windows was booted. The boot will not be affected by it as this occurs after the boot process completes.