Turning off hard disks

[Guest]

I have 5 hard disks in my pc which are mainly used for long term storage.
Most of the time I only use one hard disk from which the pc boots up. Is it
possible to turn off the other hard disks and then turn them back on
individually when I need to use them?

 

[Mistoffolees]

I have 5 hard disks in my pc which are mainly used for long term storage.
Most of the time I only use one hard disk from which the pc boots up. Is it
possible to turn off the other hard disks and then turn them back on
individually when I need to use them?

Sure, it's possible but considerably much easier if the
hard disks used for storage were external ones. This is
akin to the external SCSI tower for servers of days gone
by but which can be duplicated today by a stack of external
USB drives each with its own on/off switch connected to
a powered 4-in-1 hub to a USB port.

 

[Lil' Dave]

I have 5 hard disks in my pc which are mainly used for long term storage.
Most of the time I only use one hard disk from which the pc boots up. Is it
possible to turn off the other hard disks and then turn them back on
individually when I need to use them?

Hard drives connected internally, normally have no way of physical
disconnection. There's no way to turn them off. "Hot swap" Scsi and ide
connectors and corresponding hard drives with "hot swap" capabilities are
usually mounted on some sort of tray for removal. The physical key is what
turns them off. And, should only be turned off if "hot swap" capable when
the PC is on.

There are "cold swap" capable versions that can be swapped when the PC is
off, or physically removed. These are more common among advanced home
users.

 

[R. McCarty]

Just curious - how do you connect 5 physical drives in a single case ?
Are you using just traditional PATA or some combination of PATA
and SATA or a add-in controller ? Do you have any issues with heat ?

 

[Ghostrider]

Just curious - how do you connect 5 physical drives in a single case ?
Are you using just traditional PATA or some combination of PATA
and SATA or a add-in controller ? Do you have any issues with heat ?

In days gone by, that was within the realm of SCSI. Depending
on the SCSI host adapter, up to 15 (including the host) SCSI
devices can be daisy-chained together. The closest, modern
variant would be the USB daisy-chain, as mentioned by someone
else in this thread.

 

[Bob I]

Besides SCSI chains it's actually it's been possible with IDE for a long
time. IDE spec supports 2 units per channel and up to 4 channels. So
some motherboards were available with the Primary and secondary IDE
headers plus an IDE RAID header or two. And yes heat can become an issue
when you have the drives packed in the box like cocktail weenies!

 

[Lil' Dave]

Have an equivalent server tower with 6 hard drives internally.
Two on local ide to motherboard.
Two to add-on PCI IDE card.
Two to add-on SCSI card.
Four hard drives have case design internal trays with fans up front. Two
sit on the PC case floor mounted via an older case internal hard drive
mounting bracket.
3 fans in rear of case, top to bottom.
No heat issues. Bit noisy due to all the fans, but I am not concerned with
that.
Also two front mounted trays for external hard drive insertion, connects to
the internal PCI ide card. Cold-swap variety. And, finally, one external
Firewire drive.

If you were directing your question at the OP, excuse my reply.

 

[R. McCarty]

Thanks, I'm always interested in how people go about configurations
that push the limits. That is especially true with mass storage setups.