DIY Hard drive on/off switch?

[neonblingbling]

I was wanting to make a computer that had the option to dual boot, but making it as simple as possible. My idea was to have two hard drives (ex: A and B), with an OS on each drive. In the BIOS, I would want priority to be A and then B. To simplify choosing which OS, I want to wire in a switch that will cut off power to drive A, letting the OS on drive B boot. Thus, the user will be able to select which OS to boot from before the computer is powered on. Will this work, or will it be damaging drive A?

[[XC] Oj101]

If Drive A is switched off, Drive B becomes Drive A and will remain that way until the BIOS setting is changed again. It doesn't "remember" that there was another drive in place unfortunately. Not only that, but I've seen PCs hang at the POST screen on Detecting Drives... when the data cable is connected but not the power cable. In short, just use a boot menu. Quick, simple and easy.

[Dr_Swizz]

You used to be able to buy such switches for IDE drives that switches that changed that changed that master/slave settings on the drives.
Another way to easily switch between OSes is to to have floppy disk with a bootloader on it and another bootloader on the MBR of the first harddrive. Configure the bootloader on the floppy to boot the second harddrive. eject the floppy, but let it remain in the drive to boot from the first harddrive. If don't have a floppydrive I suppose you could use a USB memory stick instead. :-)

[neonblingbling]

Will have to look into using a boot menu. I usually just change boot order in the BIOS, but am not sure if my parents are handy enough to explore the BIOS. I had a nasty experience with getting two Windows OS files mixed up on one hard drive, so since then I've been mostly doing just one OS per drive.

[Tetrafluorometh]

Can you not set say a list of which drives are to be booted from and pending which is switched on for power it'll boot from that...?

I'm pretty sure that will work

[[XC] Oj101]

Ok, but:

First drive: ST3250318AS
Second drive: HD502HI

Power down first drive:

First drive: HD502HI
Second drive:

Power up first drive:
First drive: HD502HI
Second drive: ST3250318AS

You disconnected the first drive so it lost its spot in the "queue". A lot of BIOSs work that way.

[NKrader]

like this?

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catal...ducts_id=25675

[MrGoodCat]

i made a switch a couple years back that switched the power between sata two drives. as mentioned previously, **it hit the fan when the bios was looking for a different drive than the one "powered". didn't spend to much time trying to figure it out, ended up just dual booting off one drive. looks like that bay device from performance-pcs does just what the switch i made did, don't see how theirs helps with the bios issue...however i didn't read there product description, haha, just looked at the pics

[Toysoldier]

Why not press F8 on boot and select the HDD to boot from ?
On most mobos F8 will bring up a list of bootable drives to select from HDD, DVD and USB etc.

[MrGoodCat]

Why not press F8 on boot and select the HDD to boot from ?
On most mobos F8 will bring up a list of bootable drives to select from HDD, DVD and USB etc.

yep...that was the way "around" it. the reason i wanted the switch though was to physically choose the drive, then have it work. not power the correct drive the enter bios and select the drive again. however that is what i was doin for a while. so i just ended up dual booting off one drive, that eliminated the step of having to physically select the drive. just my opinion though, i like things simple and stream lined...that was the intention of the switch, just didn't work out