Need advise on quick connect drives!

[BruceMyers48]

Is there a device or something that I caninstall in my Home built PC that would allow me to pull one hard drive out and stick another in. This way I could switch between vista and xp with out dual boot.Bruce

 

[Shadow703793]

You cant switch between OS'es like that with out a reboot. You can use a Virtual PC (VMWare, Microsoft Virtual PC) to run XP under Vista however.

 

[tomwaddle]

If you really want separate hard drives you can buy a hard drive cage. They fit in a 5.25'' bay. Of course, you'd probably want two of them because it'd be a pain to remove one hard drive out of the cage and put in a second one.
But, you might be able to get away with keeping your Primary o/s hard drive inside your case and use the cage for your 2nd o/s by editing the boot.ini file. Anyone else wanna confirm this?

 

[BruceMyers48]

I realize that you can't switch hard drives with out a boot. The cages sounds good because one drive will have to be disconnected so you could boot to the other, Thanks Bruce

 

[jaguarskx]

You need to buy a mobile rack or two. They are hot swappable, but since you intend on switching out the OS drive, then hot swappable is meaningless.

Example:

iStarUSA T-7SATA - For SATA Drives

Vantec MRK-102FD-BK EZ - For IDE Drives

You may want to buy two of them (of the same model) so you don't have to bother with disconnecting / reconnecting the two OS drives in the inner casing, and then side it into the open bay. Plus doing so can cause wear and tear on the cables.

 

[BruceMyers48]

Thanks, I will get a couple of racks and I will use which ever I want to boot to. Thanks Bruce