technology fan

Hi everyone, i 've got some questions for what's possible or not.

First of all, my goal is to have my hard disks turned off most of the time because i don't use them all the time, so i was wondering if it possible to have some kind of switch. If it is possible please explain me how (i know mobile racks, i m not interested, its a modding section, isn't it?)
if it is not possible, can anyone tell me what will happen if i have my disks connected with motherboard but not with power? will it damage something?
So i was thinking, if making a switch to turn off/on disks is impossible, then i could have it unconnected/connected with power. (Always with pc turned off).

Thanks in advance for any of your ideas..

Flux

This is the best idea. Turn the pc off and unplug them

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Gizmo

Depends on your motherboard and if it supports hot swapping. Fill out your system specs in the control panel and we'll probably be able to let ya know.

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technology fan

My motherboard is a gigabyte S series GA-965p -ds4, and if i m correct it doesn't support hot-swapping.

if i power my pc off and unplug them but have my sata 2 cables connected won't there be any problem?

if there is no problem, then i could always make a switch but use it only with pc turned off. The only problem is that i don't know which cable of all four should i use to make one!

Acoma_Andy

No that won't be any problem.

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technology fan

Could you tell me which cable of power sata (black-red-black-yellow) should i make it switched. (Always with pc turned off )

MalVeauX

Heya,

It's of course possible and rather easy. No mod required. Well, it helps to mod yourself a place for a 2nd power supply, but that's besides the point.

There's several ways to do it, but here's the easiest (in my opinion) way to accomplish what you want.

1. Get a few hard drives.
2. Get an eSATA controller.
3. Get a separate power supply unit for said drives, or, get external enclosures that have eSATA ports (more appropriate if only using 1 or 2 drives, not 4 to 6 for example).

Now, note, you don't need an eSATA controller. It just has some features that can make things really more handy for yourself. If you don't have one nor want one, that's ok too. The point is to try and get a device that supports hot swapping, which basically means plugging something in and out while the board is still powered and on, rather than turning it off each time. You'll find this feature a big deal for folk who have servers because turning it off equals down time and servers don't like down time. You can take that feature and make it work for you too though.

House those drives where ever you want. House that power supply unit where ever you want. My suggestion is in a separate box. Then you just have drives and a PSU in a box. It won't add extra weight and heat to your main rig that will be accessing it. Alternatively, just install them into your main case, and mod yourself a way to get that 2nd power supply unit in there--but make sure it's in a way that will allow you to turn it on and off of course (without opening the case all the time, right?). This is why I mentioned a 2nd case--you can then mod the power button to the power supply for example to switch on and off.

Alternative enclosure suggestion:

An alternative to this is to get external HDD enclosures. They have their own power source and eSATA connection to boot. You just plug a few in and you're set. This is super easy mode for HDD's that are SATA fast and able to be removed/powered off while the system is still on. If you only need one or two drives worth of storage, this is an easy way to do it!

eSATA

External SATA is fast. Just like internal. They're the same. You can get SATA150 or SATA300 just the same. The "e" is just for external. But it has a nice feature in that it's a quick way to put drives where ever you want and connect them regardless to your system (instead of using dreadful USB speeds).

When an eSATA drive is plugged in and powered on, it will do just like a USB device. It will be recognized, and if it's a drive, assigned a drive letter. Boom, ready for access. And just like USB, you can then `eject' the eSATA device from the system (so it's not being accessed) and this is how you're able to shut it off (power it down) without any issue to the system nor the drive. That's basically `hot swapping' in a way. You can do this manually through Computer Management -> Disk Management (in Control Panel - Admin Tools). Or you can use a super easy and awesome little utility called HotSwap!:

HotSwap!

Download that. You simply run it. It will load to system tray. It looks just like the remove device icon you're used to in Windows. But way more powerful. You can remove physical hard drives with this baby in any version of windows. That way you can power them off. Configure HotSwap! to load when windows starts so you always have access to it, or load it only when you want to. It doesn't install or have a big setup. It's just that one file. Run it and forget it. And it's light.

So, you can connect drives with eSATA. Powered how you please. When done, use HotSwap! to remove them from the system (like ejecting them). Then you'll see the message that it's safe to remove the device. Then you just power it down.

You can get internal 4 port eSATA cards for pretty cheap. It doesn't have to be fancy or super. Also, you can get eSATA 150 for much cheaper than 300. Do that. You will not be copying fast enough to saturate the bandwidth of SATA150 anyways, not even on your internal drives, with 7200rpm drives. Like $40 for a decent card to do this.

Buy some eSATA cables.

Power the drives with a separate power source so that you can turn it off when you're done using them. Run hotswap! first. Then power down.

That should get you started.

Very best,

DuckieHo

Just a note... you do know that you can set the disks to spin down when idle after a certain period of time? While it won't complete shut them off, it saves some power/heat.

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LemonSlice

If you got a couple of USB enclosures, you could hot swap (or turn them off) without needing to keep rebooting your computer.

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DuckieHo

True, but the bandwidth will be reduced to <50MB/s

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To answer most of your questions: (1) a fridge cannot cool a PC (2) 64-bit OS for over 3.4GB (3) If a PCIe card fits, it should work (4) Resolution, not screen size (5) If you have a question, it is not news (6) Report, not respond to Spam (7) Single-Rail/Non-Modular PSUs are not always better than Multi-Rail/Modular