Windows 7 - would I need to worry about 2nd hard drive getting infected as well

I recently installed another 500GB hard drive in one of my dell desktops (i5 580) and have a question regarding viruses. I used to store my system images on an external hard drive however I prefer using an internal hard drive since it seems to create images faster and I also don't have to plug and unplug it.

I keep a number of images on the 2nd internal hard drive, if my computer was to become infected with a virus (main hard drive C:/) would I need to worry about the 2nd hard drive getting infected since it's connected to motherboard?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, just want to make sure that I'm not doing something that I'll regret later!

Not a dumb question at all. While malware can infect the MBR (master boot record) and hence infect partitions on the same HD, I am unaware of any that can jump HD's.

the one caveat is if you copy (not image) something containing malware from one to the other it might be able to infect it

If your system becomes infected with malicious software none of your connected storage media can be considered immune from infection unless it is read-only. Malware can copy itself to many locations and hide on a primary drive so there is no reason it can't copy itself and hide on a secondary storage device too. That's how viruses once spread via floppy disk from one system to another.

The good news and the bad news is that your secondary drive is just as vulnerable to infection whether installed internally or connected via usb, firewire, eSata etc.

Thank you for the info!