I'm replacing my motherboard.

I have a HDD which holds XP (which was installed while on my old motherboard) and my work. I want to do a fresh install of Windows on a new SATA II drive, copy the work off the old drive that has the old XP installation onto the new HDD and then format it. Is it possible to plug in a hdd that's been formatted while on another mainboard as long as I'm not using it for booting from?

Did that make any sence?