hello,

im not very good with hardware (or software for that matter), but ill tell you what i want to do and perhaps you can tell me..

i want to have a main HD with slackware installed on it, to do the normal computer stuff (music, video, etc), and which will be accessed every day.

i also want to start using slax on a pendrive (so usb).

the thing is, i want to disconnect the main internal HD (slack) on the occasion that i boot the pen.

i know that its not practical to keep removing and connecting a HD in the basic way, and ive heard of the external drive bays, but im not too sure what to buy. is there anything i should consider before purchasing one?

on a practical level, how do they connect to the computer? ive seen some drive enclosures with usb2 which is confusing.

another question is will the bios screw up, disconnecting the drive from the external bay or is that all taken care of?

as you can see im unsure, any advice would be good.

Why do you want to disconnect the internal drive every time? The live system won't mount or use the drive unless you specifically tell it to, there will be difference between the drive being connected or being disconnected, everything is going to work the same.

MS3FGX, i dont want the main HD to be accessable (at all) while i am in the pen drive, for security reasons.

easiest way would probably be to disable through the bios when you want to turn it off , also the hdd caddy's come with a key alot of the times that physically cut power and might be convenient for ya you just set the drive to cable select if you have 2 on the same ide channel

Regards
JKZfixme

Disable the IDE/SATA controller in the BIOS.

If you want to be able to yank the drive, you want something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817119502
My dad used to carry one of those back in the '90s. He would yank it out and put it in his briefcase when leaving his office.
If you look closely, the adapter PCB has a different connection on the back designed to sustain many inserts and removals.
Look for more though, that one looks kinda cheap, I won't trust that plastic too much, but you should get the idea.

thanks jkzfixme and r00tb33r,

so if i disable the mainHD through the bios, that drive would be *totally* unaccessable from the pen drive?

but could an attacker from the net-connected pendrive get into the bios and access the main HD? or do you physically need to restart the machine, F2 or whatever and enable a drive that way?

i like the idea of the caddys alot, but on second thought it may not be practical if i move to a laptop, perfect solution though!

Drive caddys work extremely well. Removing the drive is the only way to be 100% sure that nothing can get through.

They make IDE to flash drive adapters. You may want to consider one for your laptop. Put one OS on one flash drive and the other on another. 8GB flash drives are reasonable at this point and you can run most stuff off of an 8GB install(especially if you put your data on usb flash cards).

interesting, thanks lazlow