Hi everyone,

I would like to build a switch that allows me to switch to a particular hard drive before I turn on the computer. Is there a switch that allows me to connect with 40-pin IDE cable.

Don't know of a "switch" hardware solution. But there are bays that allow you to pull out the drive and insert another one. May be if you want to start with a different operating system then you can have a boot menu.

Switch or not, both hard disks gets powered up the same second the PC is turned on, it will be nice to know where you're going with this thought.

List of Lists.

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Yup they make them. Here is one such switch - http://www.cyberresearch.com/store/pc-accessories-computer-parts/computer-accessories-pc-peripherals/hubs-switches-switch-boxes/DSW_54KA_4278.2.htm

Do a Google search for hard drive swithces and you will be presented with many options.

As far as building one yourself, I wouldn't do it. leave it to the pros who know what they are doing. Not to question your skills but you would have no way of testing it to make sure the data transfer rate is up to spe3ed or if you are losing/corrupting data.

Thank you. Let say I have 2 or 3 hard drives in my computer. I want to switch to a particular drive as a master drive before I turn on the power of the computer. I knew about setting multiple boosting operating system, but that is not what I want.

Thank you Kurt. However, the price of those switches are too expensive. One I saw is $225US for 4 drives

Removable drive trays would be a viable solution.

Be gentle and always ground yourself before handling one.

Bryan

Vien, the one I linked to was just an example. You can find them much cheaper then that. A little Googling should provide you with a wide variety of price ranges.

I use removeable drive trays occasionally and they work fine. If you use a switch remember the maximum cable length is suppose to be 18in.

An alternative. Some BIOS's support booting from different IDE hard drives. I have a motherboard that allows the choice of 4 IDE's

Most newer bios' have an option to select a drive to boot from.

wizard-fred, my motherboard also supports 4 IDE drive as well, however, it is unlike a system with only one master hard drive in it. Anyway, I really appreciate all of your
opinion and suggestion folks. I think that there is no such switch out there that allows to disconnect all 40-pin IDE cable, except that we have to use some kind of chips to build a small curcuit to do this. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about chips.

Oh, before I also thought about removable rack, but it is very convenient because I often change the drives and that will be soon to damage the hard drive

If I understand, you want to change the Master/Slave setting of 2 hdd's on one IDE cable. IF so take a look Tom's Hardware .
I did about the same useing a double pole toggle switch instead of the key switch.

If it will work good depends on your bios being able to auto detect the different hdd paramiters unless you use the same spec on drives.

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BIOS's that support selectable hard drive booting over-rides the restriction of booting only from master.

Removeable racks won't damage your drives unless you remove them with the power on.

I have an external firewire case that I swap old (30 to 160 gig) hardisks in and out of like floppy disks for backup--Can't get enough data on Plastic even double layer DVD to bother with.

Anyway I've thought of building an enclosure with a 40 pin switch but the closer I come to that project the more I realize that the to buy a switch like that will cost more than a 300+gig SATA hardisk and building it would be like putting one of those clipper ships inside a bottle. :-)