Installation from a hard drive

I'm running a 2008 imac on the 10.9 Mavericks and I was wondering if I could Instal windows xp using Parallels 9 from a hard drive thats on a hard drive reader the runs externally from the computer? The way its set up is that the hard drive with xp on it is from an old computer and its hooked up to a device that powers and runs the hard drive which is hooked up by a usb so my mac can read it and I cant seem to figure out a way for it to run off of that hard drive.