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.

Comments

I've found it helps a lot

[alewando]

Harddrive swapping was a good idea three years ago, but the support hadn't really come through from the industry. Today's a different question entirely.

Now that I've gotten a few nicklocks, I can

• Keep a mirror drive handy when the one I do my development on dies.
  
• Bring my code with me without having to juggle zipdisks or upload enormous files.
  
• Use Linux on standard machine configurations without having to repartition the local harddisk or otherwise disturb my friends' computers much.

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.

Re:Hmm..

[thogard]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

XP does not have an MBR wipe

[steveha]

Word is that WinXP will rewrite the MBR

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

my team uses this at work

[egomaniac]

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

Turbo Switch

[10.0.0.1]

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.

Hmm..

[PopeAlien]

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..

Not a bad idea but...

[QwkHyenA]

...you're limited to two hard drives. At work and at home I use removable hard drives all the time.

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...)

Defense against WinXP's MBR wipe

[blab]

Word is that WinXP will rewrite the MBR (Mater Boot Record) eachtime it is booted into. That means byebye Linux partition for those who dualboot! This might make a great defense.

But will you go to jail if you use one as a circumvention device???

Re:sheesh

[hearingaid]

huh. pot-kettle. from the article:

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.

twerp.

Computer Science Lab

[ian_po]

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

Been using one for years

[Ulwarth]

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.

porn

[yellowjacket03]

Now i can let others use my machine with my porn locked up safe.