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Select or Lock Hard Drives... With a Key
robvasquez writes "Dr. Tom has done a review of a great $16.95 hard disk swapper. This could be a great tool for those of use who dual boot, without bootloaders, or danger to other drives/partitions. Flip the key and power the system up to the OS of your choice.
Sure beats popping IDE cables on and off drives and boards." Some things are so simple its amazing they aren't more common. Totally clever idea.
Gee. I submitted a story, only about it being System Administrator Appreciation Day. Rejected. About HackHU giving into the threat of legal action and going down. Rejected.
And this piece of crap story makes it through?!?
Now that I've gotten a few nicklocks, I can
I honestly can't speak highly enough about them. Of course it hasn't solve all the problems with IRQ conflicts I run into, but it is a step in the right direction and a welcome addition to my home computing environment.
The only site on the Internet that gets it right.
Well yes. I tried to explain VMWare to some of our technical people at work, and they were baffled. :(
But even so, VMWare does have certain limitations because it emulates so many device drivers. Still VMWare is a pretty good solution for testing.
There is also a new product from Connectix that claims to be similar. Unfortunately they don't have a trial, and it's by the same company that screwed me over back in 1995 with RAM Doubler.
Wow! You get to change between *two* hard drives!
Removable hard drive trays are much better. (I use them for the few times I use Windows to isolate it from non-Windows data. MS does not play well with others.)
One big warning on removable hard drive trays...
When you buy them, buy twice as many as you think you will need. Make sure they are all the same brand and model. There are many places that make them and NO standard wiring for them. One brand may not work with the other or even fit in the tray slot. And worst of all, you may never find that brand again!
Not fun when you have three (or more) boot drives and only two drive trays that work on the primary slot.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
This thing might work if you just happen to have the right hard drives, but if you *don't*, you'll probably wind up ripping it out of the case with your bare hands, flinging it to the floor, and stomping it to powder.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/01q3/010727/ni cklock-02.html
Quoted:
Although it might have been useful to include a setting that lets you choose both drives, there is probably a good reason why NickLock only allows you to select between single drives or none. For one thing, only a few drives run as slave by default if no jumper mode is set. The majority of drives run in single or master mode by default, and if you use two of them, there is no way to assign the specific drives to master or slave, thus causing a conflict.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
this is just supposed to make it more brainless...
How does this make Windows more brainless? I didn't think that was possible.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
At the time they were ok for us, we kept multiple OSes on multiple drives, no bootloader, let us run NT, DOS, Linux, Novell without much hassle. They were most useful for file storage. Since the Max HD size was much smaller in 95, we found times when it was useful for us to swap out entire HDs. Overall however the drives were sensitve to shock, and if you weren't careful you could damage the drives quite easily.
Later I was working at a small university who used these in one of their labs, I can't quite say I understand why. They thought it a good idea. Here is where we found the biggest problems. The locks are of the $1.95 Hardware Store variety, and they are mounted in plastic. They may to a reasonable job holding a metal desk droor shut but student regularly would rip them right out the machine.
Worse yet, they are not hot swappable. Which is fine if you remember never to yank them out while the machine is running. It is not fine the one time you yank one out while the machine is running.
Before you buy one of these devices think about rather you really need it and remember:
Bootloaders will allow you to boot most any operating system these days so it is unlikley this is really a good use of such a device.
HDD's are getting bigger all the time, is a 16.95 drive caddy really worth it when you can buy a new HDD for only a few dollars a gigabyte.
What OS do you run? How does it deal with drives and partitions? Sure bioses can autodetect different harddrive types, but will your OS like it? This isn't a problem ofcourse if its your boot drive.
From my experience with these I would say they are a mixed blessing. Certainly bad for a non-controlled or production enviroment. On a personal machine they will work just fine (if you use care.) But I can't see myself buying anything like this in future. As I said, HDDs are far to cheap to make them all that useful, I can usually buy my current HD size+twice whatever I think I might need for under $200.
Just my $0.02
People, RTFA. Turning the key doesn't make one hard drive available and the other not available -- it just selects which is bootable. So you don't need three drives (i.e. Linux, Windows, Common Files), just two -- both drives are accessible at all times.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Reading the article (and looking at the pictures), it seems like this thing is really just a jumper switch. In one key position, neither jumper is closed, in the other two positions one of the two is closed.
There has to be more interresting things to do with this. Hmmm... It could switch processor speed if your mobo has jumpers to select such things. It could switch IRQs for old ISA cards that conflict differently in Linux and Windows (hey, it could happen).
Any other ideas? Maybe you could short it across two processor pins to provide a "self destruct" switch. :-)
Greg
Check out the romtec Trios. It switches between three drives at the push of a button, and has a saftey feature that prevents you from accidentily switching after boot-up. The only downside is you can't access the data on one drive if you boot from another.
Something like this was discussed in the AVS TiVo Forum not to long ago. The idea was that you could have your normal TiVo set of disk(s), and then you could have a second instance of TiVo that you use for programs you want to store long term.
For those that say Lilo isn't that hard to set up, it isn't, but sometimes it's nice to have OS's on their own hard drives, with their own MBR. That way, you can completely blow away the drive and know you're only loosing the OS (and shared data) on that drive.
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In the article I read I found the following quotes:
Sure sounds to me like you can't have both drives operational at the same time.
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While this is one use (*cough*), anyone storing confidential records on clients/customers should consider storing all of that information on a tray-mounted drive which is locked in a safe overnight.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I've been hot swapping ide drives for quite some time with the cheap (US$10) drive caddies. So far I've only had one drive die and I suspect that was due to other abuse like being dropped.
On a box with a 2.2.* kernel, I've got a small c program that reloads the ide hd info and then I can mount a drive. I use the drives for backup since they are much cheaper than any tape/tape drive combo I could find.
The problem is the hotswap program won't work on 2.4.
If anyone wants the program, email me but its basicly:
exit(ioctl(fopen("/dev/hda", O_RDONLY),HDIO_SCAN_HWIF,atoi(argv[1])));
with error checks.
How many computers support cable select? I've worked with Compaqs and HPs that use it, but will your run-of-the-mill clone assembled from parts support cable select?
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Yup. It's the exact same setup used in research labs, except one is unclassified and one is secret. At the end of the day, you power down, pop out the classified drive, and lock it in a safe.
Nothing new here, move along, move along... :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I had a removable hard drive bay, with out the mentioned switch, and needless to say, I took it out.
I could hear the hard drive power up and down over and over again for some strange reason. I had all the cables on nice and snug, but it just didn't seem to like being in a bay.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Cute, but I'd rather have four jumpers, two to each drive, so I can just swap master and slave for dual boot...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
My wife signed up to test WinXP. We installed it on an expendable computer. This computer was set up to dual-boot between Win98 and Linux, with the GRUB bootloader. WinXP is not re-writing the MBR. Ever since the install GRUB comes up unchanged, Linux still boots, but choosing "windows" in GRUB now boots into XP instead of 98. This is the RC1 version of WinXP (build 2505).
Microsoft is possibly insane enough to put in an MBR wiping "feature" but they are definitely not insane enough to put one in at the very last minute. Therefore I state with some confidence that the release version of XP won't have an MBR wipe either.
(By the way, so far I just hate XP. Most of the changes to the user interface annoy me, and the spare computer--a 450 MHz box with a GeForce 2 and 128MB of RAM--isn't quite fast enough to run XP well.)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
We use swappable drive bays at work. We have a single computer with a dozen hard drives -- each one contains a different test environment (Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2000, WinME, Chinese, Korean, etc.)
This is (to me) a lot better than using System Commander, as it's much easier to be 100% that your system is completely plain-vanilla and any weirdness can be directly attributed to your software. It's also a lot smaller form-factor than a room full of systems...
--- egomaniac
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
After reading all the comments, and then finally reading the article, I finally see what it is this thing actually does, switches your jumpers between master and "not master". Now, what would be cool is if they could build these things into the already very cool removable drive bays. Basically have a switch on the front of the caddy itself to switch between master and slave.
Remember, I said it here first, so don't try to get a patent or anything. There is a patent on the NickLock, but this probably wouldn't infringe.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Then, if you want to swap the hard drive, you can turn off the computer and take the drives you want to swap, then don't forget to switch the master/slave jumpers too.
Last time I checked, CS (cable select) was still a valid option. Put both racks on the same IDE controller and just set your enclosed HDDs to CS. Then label the outer racks as master and slave.
Omega9
chown us base
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
I did a similar thing years ago with 2 525MB drives. I used the (useless) turbo switch to select master/slave on both drives, allowing me to access data on both drives in either configuration. Problem then was that the BOIS didn't auto-detect geometry information, so both drives had to be identical. Worked great, though.
forth ?love if honk then
What was your wiring configuration? All of my cases with Turbo switches just used a dinky single pole, single throw push button for Turbo.
Go down to Fry's and buy a couple IDE hotswap trays and install it in a spare 5.25" bay. Get some spare drives. Pretend your PC is a Nintendo and insert your cartridge (drive) of choice... BeOS, NT, Linux, FreeBSD, DOS 6.22, Darwin, QNX, WinXP, OS/2, Solaris x86, etc...
I dunno, I use Removable Hard Drive Trays, which make more sense for me.. I not only want to be able to switch drives, but move the drives between home/office etc.. I picked up several removable trays for $20 each (canadian even!) and am quite happy with them.
This lock switch seems overpriced at $16.95. Parts would cost you about $6 or less I imagine..
air and light and time and space
At home I use it to simplify my computer needs by having:
A gaming system
A linux box
And Win2K box for days when I work at home
At work we use them for developmental testing. All we do is slap a new clean HD into the computer. Boot it up. Run our software installation and try to crash it. Rinse and Repeat as needed.
One problem! The removable kits AREN'T STANDARDIZED! So, if you are going to jump into removable hard drive kits, make sure you buy what you need and then some! I've run into some that won't give the HD power til it's locked, others that give power upon being inserted and worse yet....Ones that are poorly ventilated!
All and all...Saves tons of money by not having to shell out da clams for tons of new computers (and upgrading them all once a week...)
LFS. Have you built your system today?
This restores the master boot record to the way Windows likes it. So what you need to do is have a dos boot disk ready with fdisk on it, in case of emergency. It sucks that newbies can lose data this way, but it doesn't "kill their windows partition," they do it themselves when they use that OEM restore disk.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
But will you go to jail if you use one as a circumvention device???
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
The NickLock is meant to simplify the rather annoying process of changing the main hard drive. Usually, to change the hard drive you have to first open the case and change the IDE jumper settings and probably the cabling as well. The typical way around this inconvenience is to use a removable frame system, in which each hard drive that you plan to use is installed into its own frame. After shutting down the computer, the drives can be exchanged freely. However, this solution is not ideal if you have to do this frequently, since hard drives are sensitive to physical movement. In the worst-case scenario, you could cause a head crash if you remove the drive before the read/write heads have been securely parked. In a more harmless scenario, the bearings could get out of whack, resulting in a noisier drive in the idle state.
With the NickLock, you can avoid these kinds of hazards and inconveniences.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Links:. asp 0 105/msg00179.html r .html
http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00011
http://lists.linux-india.org/lists/linux-delhi/20
or the handy mini-howto
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Linux+NT-Loade
bm :)-~
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Maybe the author is trying to indicate that the device may not work in a single-drive system, which may indeed be the case on older drives (those that won't allow a single HDD to be set to "Master" instead of "single). Maybe he knows some intricate secret of HDD setups that I've missed in many a year of buidling and fixing computers. Maybe he's just a moron, and folks should check out the NickLock website instead of reading this POS review. Guess which one I choose?
Note: Having read the Nicklock website, it appears that it is not much better than Tom's Hardware for explanations. Yeesh.
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Some folks are claiming that the article is correct, since the drive doesn't allow you to set the "slave" jumper. But 99% of drives out there assume that an open master jumper means slave. If a slave jumper is even present, it's just a holding place. Why use two jumpers, and thereby create a four-state system, when you only need to know on or off?
Another thing that had been bugging me was why there were four connectors. I should have read the nicklock site closer, so that I would have found this picture. Each drive connection has two different size jumpers to accomodate different drive styles. Duh on my part.
All in all, a cool little device. Might pick on up, even if that IS too much for those parts, since I've neither the time nor the inclination to build one myself.
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Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
I light another cigarette; Learn to forget
Well, your fingers weave some quick applets; ROTs their secret alphabets;
DMCA gets on your ass; Wish you'd not never taught that class.
I could do better, but it's late.
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The best parts of this are:
- Your controller is the one responsible for all this. All your hard-drive EVER holds is strongly encrypted bits. Way secure.
- Because you have your private key on several diskettes, when the LED is off indicating that you have a hard-drive "off", if you put your disk away then your hard-drive automatically cannot be accessed at all. For "secure" things this is great because you can trust that even if unsecure people use your computer, at best they can only delete the info on your hard-drive, not change it or read it. (Well, they can install keyboard sniffers and so forth, but you know what I mean).
- Get this: how about if the controller automagically starts backing up a hard-drive bit-for-bit whenever it's in the off mode. This just isn't possible while software has access to a hard-drive, and is possibly reading or modifying it. The most awesome backup you can have is a bit-by-bit image of each of your hard-drives. Sure it'll need a little massaging if you need to restore to a hard-drive with different geometry, but you get my point.
Isn't life grand?The best thing is,
any decent kernel can stay entirely in memory. If the controller has decent programmability, you can ask it to start making a backup every night at 12:00, as soon as every hard-drive has stopped being written or modified.
If you do your scripting right, you don't even need to unmount any of your partitions! (Just make sure your system is COMPLETELY idle at the time).
Of course, we are talking SCSI here. Do you call yourselves Geeks?
"Yeah, I have a dual 1.2 gigahertz athlon".
Oh? What's your hard-drive subsystem on that?
"72 gigger!"
IDE?
"That's E-IDE to you! 5400 RPM too!"
Sigh.
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This solution keeps that crap from happening.
Just thought I would say that the Computer Science Dept here at CU is installing some computers with these type of hard drives in them. The setup is for the operating systems class.
Each monitor/keybord is hooked up to two computers using a switch to choose which computer you are looking at. Then you can check out a couple hard drives and schedule time on one of the computers. The idea is you can setup each of your 2 computers however you want and explore things like making your own server/client programs and so on.
The whole thing is behind a firewall to protect from people messing with the rest of the lab. Its really weird to see a computer where you can just pull its disk right out. The bios is setup so it'll just boot of that drive. They are also thinking about putting linux on a CD-ROM so people without a hard drive can still use it to surf.
I wish I had these when I took OS but we learned on BSD not Win2k like next semester
As for me, I use CompactFlash cards to quickly swap OSes. Using a simple CF->IDE socket (http://www.pcengines.com/cflash.htm for the goatse.cx weary), and a 3.5" drive bay cover plate, I fashioned somewhat of a CompactFlash card slot. A 64MB CompactFlash card holds QNX, and an 8MB holds a small Linux distribution I hacked together long ago (http://www.phatboydesigns.net/mu2-embedded-2.3.4. tar.bz2). Too bad the IDE spec does not allow you to hot-swap (not that I would with a running box).
Sure, not as flexible, but it has plenty of coolness factor. I've also used the same Linux CompactFlash card in an mp3 player project I messed with last summer.
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And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
Well, you're already buying two drives for booting off of if you're using this device.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This seems sort of pointless to me. If your going to use two drive bays, why not have access to both drives? Lilo isn't that hard to setup!
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The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
"COMPUTER: format /dev/hdc -are you sure?"
"USER: duh, was that turn the key left or right?"
Even when I am as drunk as I am now, I know that the drive with all my work on it is OK, because it is unplugged and in a drawer.....
I've been using one of these for a few years. They are also very nice for taking your disks on the road; you can carry a drive between home and work, or whatever.
One guy I knew used it to enforce discipline on himself. Two drives, the same OS, but one was "work" and one was "play." Play contained chat clients, games, bookmarks to recreation sites, etc. Work contained purely down-to-business stuff. One interesting side effect to this approach (I thought) was the fact that he could have a very insecure install with lots of games and buggy flash plugins and things on the "play" drive, and if it gets compromised or the drive gets munged or whatever he looses nothing important.
Both drives are NOT available at all times. The switch has 3 modes: 1.) Drive "1" set to master (jumper circuit closed,) drive "2" no jumper; 2.) Both drives open jumpers (i.e. no drives;) 3.) Drive "2" set to master, drive "1" no jumper. Last time I checked, and according to the article, a drive with no jumper just sits there. This is what Tom was saying in the FA when he mentioned that old drives may cause strange behavior if they are not jumpered. Sheesh!
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
Now i can let others use my machine with my porn locked up safe.
There're other competing products out there... more souped up verions...
www.sentrytech.com.sg