I was wandering if there is a way to mod an Xbox hard drive without the xbox

My friend had an old xbox that didn't really work anymore, so I took out the hard drive and I want to know if I can connect that hard drive to a computer(i know how to hook it up to the computer) and mod it and put emulators and roms on it. Then I want to know if I could just put it in another xbox to play the games on it. I am new at this whole thing.

Yes. You can even buy a new hard drive and put it in any XBox. So using any HD in any XBox is OK.