Buying removable HDD trays

H

harrack52

Supreme Geek
I have an OS course and we will have to use Red Hat 9.0 .

So, to practice at home, and not to have to experiment with my existing config, I thought it would be a good idea to buy another hdd and removable hdd trays so I can just swap the hdds without having to plug/unplug cables everytime I want to switch.

The idea here is to be able to just wipe out the drive altogether in case something goes wrong without affecting any important data, yet being able to do that with a single system.

My question is: Do these things affect hdd performance ?
i.e. Would a given hdd be slower in a tray than when plugged "normally", and if so, how much slower would that be ?
My guess is no, but Id like to know for sure.

Here's the one I'm looking at: http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=GN210-BLK

I got that idea from college cause that's exactly how they work. We have removable hdds so when we have labs, we remove the usual hdd and we put in the hdd we work on so we can do whatever it is we want with them, without risking ****ing everything up.
 
One of the many reasons that Linux rocks is that it can easily handle a multi-boot environment. You don't need to be able to pull & swap HDDs in order to recover from a (self-induced ;)) crash. Believe me, I've 'rooted' myself to death plenty of times in various labs. :sick: All you have to do is add the second HDD as a secondary drive, and install RH9 on it. It'll allow you to set up a multi-boot with your previous OS, so they can co-exist happily. Even if you hose Linux while performing 'dangerous' labs, your primary OS will not be affected. You simply recover or reinstall RedHat again, and the other OS doesn't even notice... :chk:

Adendum: If you do absolutely want the ability to quickly pull & swap HDDs, that is probably the next best solution to hot-swap SCSI (and a lot cheaper!). Price looks right on CompGeeks too. :)
 
You're saying SCSI drives are cheaper ?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.


It is also possible to use thw Windows boot loder to multi-boot, even in Linux. Actually I learnt how to do it just 2 days ago. How is Linux better than Windows for doing that ?
 
harrack52 said:
You're saying SCSI drives are cheaper ?...It is also possible to use thw Windows boot loder to multi-boot, even in Linux. Actually I learnt how to do it just 2 days ago. How is Linux better than Windows for doing that ?
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I'm definately not saying that SCSI drives are cheaper than EIDE! Wow, I really should've watched my wording a little better, huh? I was *trying* to say that SCSI is better for hot-swapping due to its architecture, but IDE is much better on cost. As far as the boot loader: Win vs Lin, there are some pretty big differences between the old 16-bit bootloader that MS uses and LILO or GRUB, but I won't get into that. ...Except to say that MS' boot-loader is quick and dirty and not very OS-aware, and LILO (or GRUB) is much better about configuration, functionality, and visual appeal. :chk:
 
Ok I was wondering. I would have asked you some links where I could have gotten those SCSI drives :D

Well I had the chance to work with both boot loaders. (only once with grub and that was w/ SuSe 8.2 Pro) and it's actually easy to config since you do it from the install itself, whereas in Windows, you have to copy files on your c drive and all that crap because Windows cannot recognize partitions that are too far on the disk.

And visual appeal...let's not even go there ;)
 
harrack52 said:
Ok I was wondering. I would have asked you some links where I could have gotten those SCSI drives :D
Click to expand...
Heh, I'd like a little of that myself! </me orders RAID-5 controller>
And visual appeal...let's not even go there ;)
Click to expand...
OK, we won't go there. :) Let's just be kind and say, "Microsoft's bootloader is little better than an afterthought." Why, after all, would anybody want to run anything but XP Home? :sick:
 
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