Data on Second hard Drive.

Since the price of hard drive storage is so cheap, I will be installing a second hard drive on my Windows 98 computer. I will use the second HD to mirror some of the critical data on drive 1 (copying it to the second HD via Explorer and batch files). If my computer were to fail later on, would I be able to remove the second HD, install it on another Windows computer and retrieve the data. Or, would I replace the first HD (that failed) & then access the second HD as usual? (assuming the secondHD is undamaged). Thanks.