Internal HD tray, How To?

[rustyjackson]

My Gateway 2.8g P4 PC has 2 HD's. The 2nd drive I use for AVI, WAV, TIFF files only. no software, etc.
I'd like to set it up so I could swap HD's in and out as I move from one video project to another.
I have looked at some enclosures, some w/fans, some without. I am not a advanced hardware kind of person and don't know how to go about setting it up.
I just installed a new system drive and reloaded my XP software but that is the limit of my skills.
Your help and product recomendations are greatly appreciated.

 

[folken]

Get a 5.25" hotswap enclosure. That would probably be the cheapest and easiest way of doing it.
You could have a separate portable hd for each project (USB or FireWire) but that would be more expensive.
What type of hd are you planning on using? IDE, SATA, SCSI, etc.

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[Codesmith]

I have three cheap 5.25" which I use to swap drives between my 2 PCs and with friends.

If you are using IDE drives you will have to reboot, IDE is not hotswapable unless you have a special IDE controller card.

SATA on the other hand is hotswapable. If your motherboard has SATA or you are willing to buy a SATA controller you can swap SATA drives while windows in running.

You can also get an external IDE hard drive enclosure with both USB 2.0 and SATA connectors for about $39.

The SATA connector will let you use an external hard drive without any performance penalty. USB 2.0 is limmited to about 24 mb/s, but is nice to have since it will allow you to connect to any PC.

 

[rustyjackson]

My other hard drive is IDE. Is it as simple as buying the tray and installing it then sliding a new drive in and go?

Seems as tho nothing in the computer world id that simple.

 

[folken]

Yep, it is as simple as that. For an IDE drive you will have to shut down the computer to do the swap though.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[rustyjackson]

Thank You