Installing programs on secondary drive

Instead of installing programs on the main OS Drive and installing on a secondary drive or partition, I should still be able to run the programs if I decide to format the OS drive and reinstall Windows. Is this right?

If so, the problem I'm seeing is that Windows won't know those programs are installed (like using the search bar to find programs or the program list) since whatever registry entries the program installer made will be wiped. Is there an easy way to back it up?

Or is it advisable to just reinstall everything when I reformat?

Even if programs are installed on a secondary drive you would need to reinstall them if you format your system drive.

During the install, data is written to the registry that would be near impossible to duplicate.