2011 i5 Base Mini HDD Upgrade Question

[Wicked1]

Ok so I bought the base i5 2.3 with the Apple 500GB HDD but I would like to put my Seagate Hyrbrid 500GB in as the main drive but here is my question.

With the Internal original Lion HDD in the Mini, can I re-install Lion on the Hybrid HDD using an external USB chassis, so I figured I could reboot the system into recovery, and install lion on the external Hybrid HDD, then after that, swap the Hybrid with the internal keeping the original drive in tact for an emergency.

 

[shortcut3d]

You can use system recovery Disk Utility to restore to another drive. It is not possible with Lion to do it from within OSX.

Why not install the 500GB in the second slot internally and use it as a Time Capsule drive? It's max $60 in parts. Installation time would be another 10 minutes more than a simple swap.