can I plug in my hard drive while booted on install DVD snow leopard

I got the white screen of death then unplugged my harddrive and booted from cd, then I set it to boot always from cd and after many times of turning on and off only once did I get it to boot from the DVD with the harddrive in. I wondered if I could boot it from the DVD and while its on with disk utility open then I could plug in my hard drive, or with diskwarrior open then plug in the hard drive. power cord is connected so no need for battery this could work!