How to Disable SATA Drives in BIOS???

[sohosources]

Hi, Gang:

My main PC has a pair of SATA II hard drives that I use for XP -- a
250-GB boot drive and a 500-GB Data drive with multiple partitions. I
also have a PATA IDE drive tray system that lets me swap multiple
drives in and out for testing other OSs, etc.

On one removable PATA drive I have a duplicate XP install that I use
only for games (so the game junk doesn't crud-up my registry, etc). I
had a bunch of multiboot problems until I physically disconnected my
usual SATA drives and reformatted and reinstalled XP on the IDE drive.
Then, each drive had working boot files and the two boot menus didn't
interact, etc. I simply let the BIOS default to the 250 SATA drive and
use the F9 boot drive selector at startup when I want to boot to the
IDE drive.

Problem: I don't want to physically disconnect my SATA drives every
time I install a new version of Linux onto a removable IDE drive. The
damn connectors are hard to get out, and I don't want to stress my MB
or the connector blocks on my drives...but I do want to have the
drives effectively "out of the system" so I can't accidentally
reformat them, wipe out a partition, etc, when I'm installing
something on the PATA/IDE bus

I tried disabling the drives in the bios, but low-level programs such
as Acronis True image and Partition Magic still "see" the drives even
though they're "disabled," and I don't want to accidentally nuke them.

1. Can I simply disconnect the SATA power cables from the drives,
leaving the hard-to-remove SATA signal cables still attached? Could
that damage the drives in any way? Would that effectively disconnect
the drives from low-level routines (I assume it would since there's no
power)?

2. Is there an effective way to "soft disconnect" the drives in the
BIOS, etc?


Your help is greatly appreciated!

--KK in MN

 

[Eric Gisin]

Usually the Integrated Periphs setup lets you disable each IDE channel.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi, Gang:

My main PC has a pair of SATA II hard drives that I use for XP -- a
250-GB boot drive and a 500-GB Data drive with multiple partitions. I
also have a PATA IDE drive tray system that lets me swap multiple
drives in and out for testing other OSs, etc.

On one removable PATA drive I have a duplicate XP install that I use
only for games (so the game junk doesn't crud-up my registry, etc). I
had a bunch of multiboot problems until I physically disconnected my
usual SATA drives and reformatted and reinstalled XP on the IDE drive.
Then, each drive had working boot files and the two boot menus didn't
interact, etc. I simply let the BIOS default to the 250 SATA drive and
use the F9 boot drive selector at startup when I want to boot to the
IDE drive.

Problem: I don't want to physically disconnect my SATA drives every
time I install a new version of Linux onto a removable IDE drive. The
damn connectors are hard to get out, and I don't want to stress my MB
or the connector blocks on my drives...but I do want to have the
drives effectively "out of the system" so I can't accidentally
reformat them, wipe out a partition, etc, when I'm installing
something on the PATA/IDE bus

I tried disabling the drives in the bios, but low-level programs such
as Acronis True image and Partition Magic still "see" the drives even
though they're "disabled," and I don't want to accidentally nuke them.

1. Can I simply disconnect the SATA power cables from the drives,
leaving the hard-to-remove SATA signal cables still attached? Could
that damage the drives in any way? Would that effectively disconnect
the drives from low-level routines (I assume it would since there's no
power)?

Yes, that works. The data cable are insuklated anyways, via small
coupling capacirotrs. The drive will not get damaged. And without
power it will stay totally unresponsive.

2. Is there an effective way to "soft disconnect" the drives in the
BIOS, etc?

I don't think so.

Your help is greatly appreciated!

One additional thing you can do is put a switch in, that disconnects
pwer. The clean thing is tio use a three contact one. Disconnecting
3.3V entirely and switching only 12V and 5V should typically work as
well.

Arno

 

[Andy]

Hi, Gang:

My main PC has a pair of SATA II hard drives that I use for XP -- a
250-GB boot drive and a 500-GB Data drive with multiple partitions. I
also have a PATA IDE drive tray system that lets me swap multiple
drives in and out for testing other OSs, etc.

On one removable PATA drive I have a duplicate XP install that I use
only for games (so the game junk doesn't crud-up my registry, etc). I
had a bunch of multiboot problems until I physically disconnected my
usual SATA drives and reformatted and reinstalled XP on the IDE drive.
Then, each drive had working boot files and the two boot menus didn't
interact, etc. I simply let the BIOS default to the 250 SATA drive and
use the F9 boot drive selector at startup when I want to boot to the
IDE drive.

Problem: I don't want to physically disconnect my SATA drives every
time I install a new version of Linux onto a removable IDE drive. The
damn connectors are hard to get out, and I don't want to stress my MB
or the connector blocks on my drives...but I do want to have the
drives effectively "out of the system" so I can't accidentally
reformat them, wipe out a partition, etc, when I'm installing
something on the PATA/IDE bus

I tried disabling the drives in the bios, but low-level programs such
as Acronis True image and Partition Magic still "see" the drives even
though they're "disabled," and I don't want to accidentally nuke them.

1. Can I simply disconnect the SATA power cables from the drives,
leaving the hard-to-remove SATA signal cables still attached? Could
that damage the drives in any way? Would that effectively disconnect
the drives from low-level routines (I assume it would since there's no
power)?

2. Is there an effective way to "soft disconnect" the drives in the
BIOS, etc?

What motherboard are you using?
Some motherboards allow this; others don't.