SATA Hard drive selector switch? Do they make these?

[PingSpike]

I know these exist, but I'm having a hard time finding them for sale. I'd like to be able to install two disks in my PC, one with linux and one with XP just for simplicity and then flip a switch on the front of the PC to change operating systems. I'd prefer if power was turned off to the inactive drive but no big deal.

Any have any experience with these...recommendations?

 

[mercanucaribe]

Wire some switches into a Molex cable. You'll need one switch for 12v and one for 5v on each hard drive. Use a splitter so you don't have to cut your PSU's wires.

 

[Zepper]

SATA is designed for hot-swap shouldn't need any switch box. Just use a mobile rack with a spare tray. The frequencies on the SATA data cable (at least 10 times the frequency of PATA) would made a data switch prohibitively expensive relative to one for PATA. If you find one, let me know.

re. the above post - don't need separate switches - a single DPST or DPDT switch will do. IAC, if you want the drives connected to the same port, then a power switch alone won't do.

.bh.

 

[PingSpike]

After looking around a bit, I think I might be best served by buying two removable trays with drive bays that use a key to turn them on/off and then just turning one key off and the other on to switch. Its an extra step, but previously I was thinking I'd have to swap the drives in and out which sounded to time consuming.

 

[mellondust]

There are a couple out there from really expensive to reasonable. I'm not sure how well they work, but I am a big fan of the romtec trios. Don't have a SATA drive so haven't looked into it more, but probably will get the combox(don't make any more-ebay) when I upgrade.

expensive

combox

 

[PingSpike]

Thanks mellondust. I'd actually stumbled onto the "expensive" link myself. Even the combox isn't that great a deal, although the price isn't outrageous or anything. I'm going to keep looking into the duel drive tray idea and see if I can make that work. That option would actually leave me with greater future flexibility as well.

 

[corkyg]

Echo the SATA mobile rack with two trays - one for Linux and one for XP. Gee - with a 3rd tray you could do Vista as well.