Years ago I heard of a Bootable Jaz Drive. A user can swap out
different hard drives and use different operating systems.
Is there such a system now? If so, is it any good ?
richmarin:
Not sure if this is what you're referring to, but perhaps it will be of some
interest to you...
You might want to consider installing one or two removable hard drives in
your desktop computer. The hard drives are housed in so-called mobile racks
that fit in the 5 1/4" bays of a desktop's computer case . The racks
themselves are two-piece affairs with the HD residing in a removable tray
that slides in and out of the rack that's affixed to the computer case. The
beauty of this arrangement is that the drives can easily be accessed from
outside the computer case. Note that these mobile racks are designed for
desktop computers and not laptops/notebooks because of the latter's
size/weight considerations.
Through use of these removable hard drives in their mobile racks, the user
has an *unlimited* supply of hard drives that are virtually instantly
available for any purpose, including your interest - installing different
operating systems on separate hard drives, thus making them physically &
electronically distinct from each other.
There's a wide variety of mobile racks available, ranging in cost from about
$15 (all plastic) to $50 and up for the all-aluminum models for both PATA &
SATA drives. Installing them is no more difficult then installing a CD-ROM
or any other 5 1/4" device. You can do a Google search of "mobile racks" to
peruse the many different models.available from online vendors.
The advantage of equipping your desktop computer with two removable hard
drives (rather than one) is the enormous flexibility this arrangement
provides and simplifies creating & maintaining a routine backup system
through the use of a disk imaging program, e.g., Ghost, Acronis True Image,
to "clone" the contents of one HD to another HD.
Anna
