2011 Mac Mini - Boot up on 2nd internal hard drive?

Hi folks,
I just picked up a Mac Mini today, after I lost all patience with my circa 2007 MacBook Pro when it stopped booting up this morning. I ordered more RAM and am planning to install the recently replaced hard drive from my MBP into my Mac Mini. I'm just wondering, will that drive just show up as another hard drive, similar to the way that external hard drives appear? And more importantly, the old hard drive has an older version of Snow Leopard installed, as well as a bunch of software, including my Adobe CS software. I've already jumped through hoops with Adobe to get my software reinstalled on my MBP a few months ago, and I don't feel like dealing with that again. So if the drive does show up as a separate device, can I just run my Adobe software from that drive? Or do I have to reboot but select that old hard drive at startup (if that's even an option) to run all software on it?
Thanks!

I mention "if SL will run" for a good reason.  Newer Macs have the EFI (similar to BIOS in PC) set to usually run only the OSX it came with.
I would not bet anything on the SL installation being stable in the macmini, especially as the device drivers are for a MacbookPro (trackpad, keyboard, graphics chips, etc) instead of for a Macmini.  Macmini has no built-in keyboard/mouse so has slightly more adaptable installed keyboard and mouse controllers than a macbookpro installation would.
I would not bet any money on anything other than Lion being stable on that macmini.

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