Dual booting Ubuntu & Win7 on separate drives

Hi all, I currently have a ThinkPad and I've just replace the HDD with an SSD. Like most of y'all I reinstall Win7 on the SSD and I'll config HDD for storage once my ultrabay caddy arrived. But I have this idea to install Ubuntu on the HDD as a secondary OS just in case the SSD goes bad.  So it's a Ubuntu, Win7 dual boot on separate drives.

I've googled some interesting articles which target this exact project. But I still have some questions, since I have no experience in dual booting ..

-Will I be able to access my files in both Win7 and Ubuntu? And most importantly, how will the drivers for webcam, Fn keys etc. be handled? Will Ubuntu auto detect and install or something?

-I've read about partitioning manually with /boot, /root, /home, and swap. So why is /home necessary where there are other (non-partitioned)free space in the HDD for storage?

-If I wanna let Ubuntu auto install in the HDD, while with the SDD unplugged, how would this method compare to partitioning the HDD manually?

-I don't mind changing the boot priority depending which OS I wanna boot, will this work without getting involved with the Boot Manager?

Thanks a lot guys! Some article suggestions are also appreciated if it's too long for an answer.

 

btw is there a way to directly go to my posted forum topics without searching it every time?

Install windows 7 first, then ubuntu on the second drive. That way you can use grub to mangage the boot, rather than windows boot manager. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong)

Yes, that's correct nehkz.

GRUB loader support windows boot. Not vice versa.

When it comes to _seperate drives_ It doesnt really matter what order you install, as none of them will interferer with each other's booting, because you have to pick what device to boot on a hardware level, because it's different drives..

Depending on your Bios, and boot of computer, you might have to manually set different boot priority on the drives depending on which one you want to boot from.

 

I just loaded on seperate drives and then change boot order in bios to drive I want at the time. A little pain in the ass but no booloader nonsense.I have no trouble seeing or using the other drive no matter which OS I'm using.

Don't bother splitting up /home, /boot and stuff into their own partitions, just put them all on the same partition (it should do this automatically by default).

You should be able to view your Windows files on linux, but Windows won't want to know linux's stuff.  I currently dual boot so I made most of my data drives NTFS so both Windows and Linux can read them.