I have been looking into (can't find anymore) these things that are like hard drive trays. They are trays that you place a hard drive in and allow you to easily remove and reattach the hard drive. It looks like some have SATA connectors etc. I was thinking about using this concept for a dual boot computer. I have had problems dual booting before because the MBR usually gets destroyed. I was wondering if anyone knows where I can get one of these "hard drive trays" and whether or not this would be a better dual boot solution. I have an external hard drive already but I would rather not mess with booting linux of an external, if that's even at all possible.
You can get them from newegg, but it is probably a bad idea to be constantly swapping out drives as the connectors will wear out very fast. Booting linux off of USB is not hard, and might be a better solution since you can just switch the drive off rather than constantly disconnecting the drive.
Well, the ones I saw were like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121178 It looks like you don't disconnect from the hard drive, it looks like the tray has its own connectors. Also, would the USB drive dual booting solve my mbr problem? It seems like whenever I use dual booting (on a partitioned hard drive, one partition vista another ubuntu) it likes to corrupt the hard drive and more often the mbr.
I use them, but not as my primary drive. I used them a lot until the price of external enclosures came down in price. The wear that Killerbug is referring to is the on the connector between the sled (tray) and the dock (permanent mount). Dual boot, if done properly is IMHO the best solution. Anytime you add mechanical connections to the mix you add a point of failure.
can also put a 2nd hd into tower & at post screen select which drive to boot from. did that on mine as had win98se on 1 drive & xp on another drive.
Alright well I'll see what kind of external boot stuff I can find. I've never done an external hdd dual boot. Any recommendations? I used to run ubuntu but I wouldn't mind running some other distro.
True. I might as well try the external hdd dual boot first though. I own one of those and not a second internal. I'll see what that can do for me and then maybe consider a second internal.
Depending on your bios, you may be able to set it to boot to usb first, then to internal if there is no UBS connected/turned on. Some mainboards will remember this, others will make you set it again every time you turn the external back on. Linux LOVES running on USB drives, there are even versions designed to run off of USB memory sticks. Windows will also run off USB drives, but it is a lot more picky about setup (especialy vista).
