I need some suggestions here.
I am in need of a way to swap back and forth between different versions of testing and my slave BE/FE. I am considering a reliable SATA Removable / Mobile Hard Drive rack that will fit the a 5 1/4" drive bay. A plus would be individual drive trays that could be purchased separately. Any experience would be helpful

TVBox.

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TVBox
LinHES R8.6.1

I just have two drives mounted in the case. When I want to switch between the O/S's that are installed on each drive, I simply unplug/plugin the power cord. Nothing as fancy as you're suggesting but it works :p

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.

I use this for your exact purpose. Your plus about individual trays? try NO TRAYS. The bare drive slides in locks behind the door.

I missed one important factor. My kid need to do it quickly. She seems to think that I will absent mindedly leave the testing drive in play. It will never happen!!!

Yours idea is the simplest. I did find this link when I did a little searching.
http://www.thesataswitch.com/
He uses a four pole rotary switch which is a little overkill and rotary switches are always problematic. It looks to me that you could get by with a double pole double throw two position switch. I see no reason to break the common black wires.

Some of the newer green drives may require the orange 3.3 volt wire. If I put a switch together I would use a tipple pole double throw two position switch on the yellow, red and orange wires. A 3 pole double pole relay may be easer and more reliable. You could use one of the supply voltages as a holding contact for the relay.

I know this doesn't belong in the conversation but you must have the orange 3.3 volt power connection or the hot swapping drive function will not work. Using the old four-pin molex connector in any fashion to supply power to your SATA will disable hot swap.


I like the 50,000 swap cycles rating on the connectors. I have seen no other company that will even mention it in any of the literature. Most of all these removable racks use the connectors of the drive as the removable connection point.

Now this has really got me thinking. A switch between the internal drive and a removable hard drive rack. Look at the possibilities.

Thanks
TVBox

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TVBox
LinHES R8.6.1

Could it be someone it preparing for some R6 testing?!

I need some more user friendly equipment.
TVBox

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TVBox
LinHES R8.6.1