OS and Hard Drive Swapping Question

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BrentM94

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Jul 13, 2015
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I have a question I have two hard drives.

One has windows vista 32-bit OS. The other one has windows vista 64-bit OS.

I use the 64-bit for gaming and the 32-bit has all our pictures and irreplaceables on it.

The only problem is that I have to switch the SATA power and connector cords to the hard drive I'm using. I don't have both of them hooked up at the same time.

Can switching them back and forth harm my hard drives or damage them in any way?
 
Solution
Someone Somewhere
Smaller SATA cable is the Data or Signal one.

The actual info on the drive won't be damaged (assuming the PC is turned off). However, that fifty cycle limit applies to both the cable and the plug on the drive - if the plug on the drive breaks, you're going to be breaking out the soldering iron or restoring from a backup.

Yes, you can connect them both at the same time, and the BIOS will let you choose which to boot. Shouldn't be any issues there.

Also, as always, keep an up-to-date and complete backup.
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BrentM94

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Jul 13, 2015
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I have three connectors this one and two others from other scrap computers. Thank you that helps a lot but the big question is can the hard drive be damaged from unplugging it and plugging it back in. Can data be damaged by doing this?

I was going to connect both hard drives however I don't know if it will cause problems to the 32-bit hard drive.

Can I then select from bios and what I mean by bios is when you start your computer and press F2 or F12 which hard drive to start when computer starts.

Hope that makes sense.

As well as the problem that I don't know where to plug the other SATA connector in. I have a cord of like 5 SATA power connectors but only one of the SATA regular connectors in this computer. I have two others in other computers if I knew where to plug them in at. I believe from the motherboard into the hard drive. I don't want to mess anything up.

Oh and yes it is a desktop.

Lastly I might be confusing you on why I'm saying SATA power and regular connectors. I mean how there are two cords that connect the hard drive the bigger one is the power and the smaller one is the regular from what I've said I don't know what they are really called.
 
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Someone Somewhere

Someone Somewhere

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Sep 23, 2012
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Smaller SATA cable is the Data or Signal one.

The actual info on the drive won't be damaged (assuming the PC is turned off). However, that fifty cycle limit applies to both the cable and the plug on the drive - if the plug on the drive breaks, you're going to be breaking out the soldering iron or restoring from a backup.

Yes, you can connect them both at the same time, and the BIOS will let you choose which to boot. Shouldn't be any issues there.

Also, as always, keep an up-to-date and complete backup.
 
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BrentM94

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Jul 13, 2015
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Thanks I'm just going to unplug my disk drive SATA data cable and use that for my second hard drive.

I don't use my disk drive all too much since it's broken anyways.
 
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