How to boot from second drive

I have a Alienware 13 R3 (OLED) and was thinking about installing Linux on the second 1Tb drive and changing the boot sequence to boot from the first or the second drive.

1. Has anyone tried this?

2. I have a friend running Linux Mint on the first drive but just data on the second drive. I cannot see why I could not use both drives with different OS on them. Can't I use F2/F12 to change the boot sequence from drive 1 to drive 2 and back?