two copies of XP pro on one drive

[samvest]

I have a laptop that i use for remote recording. the laptop has in internal drive and an external firewire drive. the firewire drive is used exclusively for storing the audio files that are recorded. when
the recording is finished, i take the firewire drive back to my studio and transfer the audio files to my studio machine for further work.

the operating system has been optimized for recording (a lot of stuff is turned off) and the laptop has never been connected to the internet.
this is done both to maximize performance for recording and for security reasons.

now i want to use the laptop for regular computer stuff as well. mostly email and web surfing. however, i do not want to compromise my remote recording setup.

I came up with to possibilities. first possibility: buy a second internal drive and swap drives depending on use (not the most attractive);
my second idea is to partition the internal drive and install a new copy of XP on the second partition. this second version of XP would have a firewall and anti spam, anti spyware, etc.

will this work? can one install two copies of XP on two partitions of the same hard drive without them interfering with each other?
what pitfalls might i encounter?
how independent will these two version of XP be?

thanks for the help.

[dcc]

Yes.

[nanosani]

No pitfalls and no problems if both the Windows are installed on different partitions.

[needlotsofhelp]

Did this work for you? I'm searching for a creative solution to a problem.

PROBLEM: I purchased and installed a 30-day trial version of Adobe CS3 (Standard) on DVD. The installation totally messed up XP to the point of requiring me to do a system resore using the safe mode to the day before I installed CS3. I beleive the problem was due to some sort of incompatibility with running two external Maxtor hard drives (one USB and the other Firewire). This is just a theory at this point. After several attempts and doing lots of research, I finally came up with a system that allowed me to install CS3 error-free:

1) Shut off the remote drives.
2) Uninstalled all Adobe software.
3) Download and ran the Adobe Flash Player uninstaller.
4) Download and ran Microsoft Cleanup Utility (found nothing).
5) Download and ran Adobe CS3 Clean Script Utility (level 2).
5) Disabled all services (except Microsoft) and startups using MSCONFIG.
6) Rebooted and then ran the installation again.

The software suite installed without a hitch, but when I attempted to launch any of the components, I get the following message:

===========
A problem was encountered while trying to load the trial period for Adobe Creative Suite.

Click quit to see if restarting your computer or reinstalling the software will correct this problem. Otherwise click `continue' to display a screen where you can enter a valid serial number to begin using the product without trial.
============
After consulting with a very nice Adobe Tech Help person, I discovered that appearently, restoring the system reset some sort of internal clock that makes CS3 think the trial period is over (even though its only been 2 days). This prevents people from illegally extending the trial period (sounds logical). Unfortunatly, he had no solution other than to shell out the $1200 for the license without first tiraling the software.

PROPOSED SOLUTION: My computer is set up with two internal hard drives. The older and smaller 80 GB hard drive is partitioned into a C and D drive and the newer 750 GB hard drive is registered as a single drive E. XP and all of my software reside on Drive C and all of my data currently resides on drive E (or on my remote drives). My Drive D has an older version of my data which can be deleted. Can I do a fresh installation of XP onto drive D and then load CS3 onto that drive to do the trial?