Mike G said:
I have a HDD in a removable tray. I turn the key on when I want to use it
and turn it off when I don't. I turn it on before a do a back up and off
when finished. My system runs on sata HDD's but this removable one is on
one of the ide channels.
Paul:
Mike's suggestion is a good one and I believe you would be wise to consider
it. Here's a bit more detailed information about these removable hard
drives.
We're assuming that you're working with a desktop computer case that has at
least one vacant 5 1/4" bay presently available. If so, you could equip that
PC with at least one removable HDD perhaps in addition to the internal HDD
that's already installed. These mobile rack devices that contain a removable
HDD are two-piece affairs - the rack itself and the inner tray or caddy (in
which the hard drive resides) that slides into the rack. They come in
all-aluminum models or a combination of aluminum-plastic ranging in price
from about $15 to $50. Mobile racks come in various versions, depending
upon whether the hard drive to be housed is an IDE/ATA, SATA, or SCSI
device. A Google search for "removable hard drive mobile racks" will result
in a wealth of information on these products and their vendors.
The installation of these devices is simplicity itself - no more difficult
than installing an optical drive. After the rack is installed you just plop
the hard drive into the removable tray (caddy), make two simple connections
(power & data cable), and slide the tray into the mobile rack. Note that the
removable hard drive mobile racks we are discussing are designed to be
installed in desktop computers and not laptop or notebook computers. The
size, weight, and design considerations of laptops/notebooks do not allow
for this hardware configuration.
These mobile racks are nearly always equipped with a ON-OFF keylock, so a
simple turn of the key, in effect, activates the HDD. For added security you
can push or pull the removable tray in or out using the tray's handle and
thus electrically/physically connect or disconnect the HDD from the system.
No more difficult than opening or closing a small desk drawer.
Do you see the enormous advantage of this type of hardware configuration as
it applies to your particular objective? Now you will be able to maintain
your day-to-day working internal HDD "clean", while you install this or that
program on the removable HDD. You can "play around" with all sorts of
configurations on that removable HDD knowing that your "real" HDD is
completely isolated from any problems that may arise. Assuming you have
installed an OS on the removable HDD or (using a disk imaging program)
"cloned" the contents of your present internal HDD to the removable drive,
you can boot to either HDD without the need to enter the BIOS or use a
third-party boot manager. There is no need to modify the boot.ini files.
Each drive is effectively isolated from each other, but if for any reason
you want both drives connected during bootup, you can easily achieve that
configuration as well. It's an ideal system for computing with multiple
operating systems or meeting one's special interests.
Another significant advantage of using a removable HDD is that now you can
have an *unlimited* number of HDDs at your disposal by simply using
additional removable trays to house the drives. So that another important
advantage of using this hardware configuration is that you'll be able to use
another removable HDD as the backup drive for your day-to-day working HDD.
We've worked with these removable hard drive affairs for more than six years
now and have helped hundreds of users install & operate this kind of system.
We have found this hardware arrangement a most desirable configuration for
many users. We've encountered no negative performance issues using these
devices in comparison with internally-installed HDDs and find the
flexibility
and peace of mind you gain from this configuration an enormous advantage.
Do give it some thought.
Anna
