Dual booting separate mac os from separate internal drives

Currently running Mac OS 10.4.11 with Bootcamp and Windows XP Pro. running on Primary HD drive on a Mac Pro 1.1 with a Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor - 2.66 ghz, and 3 GB of ram. Would like to install a new 3TB hard drive (computer has 3 internal slots for hard drives) and install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and then upgrade that to OS X Lion (10.7).

Can I then start machine and by holding Option key choose which operating system to utilize? Reason for this madness is that some of the "old" software on OS 10.4.11 may not work with Snow Leopard. Will the machine recognize both operating systems and allow me the choice to boot from the original hard drive or from the new (separate) hard drive by utilizing the Option key?