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Build Your Own SATA Hard Drive Switch

Posted by timothy on from the there-can-be-only-one dept.

Mikey Win writes "ExtremeTech shows us a cool hardware hack that allows multiple operating system to boot without dealing with any tedious BIOS setup changes. How? By building your own SATA hard drive switch. The result? You can expect a longer hard drive life span, power supply load reduction, and partitions protected from becoming overwritten or corrupted."

4 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Mad scientist hard drive switch by Captain+Spam · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hrmph. Call me when the switch in question is tied to a massive, mad scientist-quality switch, clearly labeled in big letters with "LINUX" on one side, "WINDOWS" on the other. It should also make a satisfying mechanical switching noise whenever I pull it. And if you can make lightning crack outside my window every time, that'd be nice, too.

    --
    Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
  2. How is this a SATA switch? by james_shoemaker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's just a drive power switch. I was expecting the actual SATA connection to be switched not just the power to the various drives.

  3. Grub by jgtg32a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do people really think that Grub is that hard or this just another case of because we can.

  4. Re:I like it by gweihir · · Score: 5, Informative

    In fact switching the ground wires under power gives you a high risk of blowing up your drives: If you use a non-bridging switch (or it does not make perfect contact, as cheper ones may do after some time), you can have a situation where +5V and +12V have contact, but ground does not. This typically leads to immediate death of the whole drive electronics.

    These people have no clue what they are doing.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.