Any easy way to disable/switch between hard drives?

Lee James · Tuesday at 23:51

Is there an easy way to quickly disable/switch hard drives without physically disconnecting them?

It's just that I've got a lot of drives I don't use as much - small older drives, backups, archived stuff etc. I don't need these hooked up all the time, nor would there be enough cables to do that anyway. Plus I've also been thinking about running two different operating systems from the same machine, so I'd need some way to switch before booting.

Surprised there doesn't seem to be any switcher cables out there. How do most people deal with multiple hard drives? Is it only me who keeps all his older drives for extra space/backups?

Snapshot · Wednesday at 07:10

Probably not just you but I sweep out the old tiddlers and only keep the newer, larger drives. My backups are organised so I have no need of random ones on old small drives.

When I do need to attach an external HDD I use a docking station such as https://www.overclockers.co.uk/icyb...usb-3.2-gen-1-type-a-connector-hd-14b-bt.html. For SSDs I use a USB-to-SATA cable.

hornetstinger · Wednesday at 07:19

What type of drive SATA or nvme?

jokerguv · Thursday at 09:05

I do this by enabling/disabling required sata drives in the bios (Asus B650E-F). Don't think NVME drives can be controlled this way (outside of server/workstation class boards).

But for sata drives it's a breeze. Enter bios, enable Sata drive 1 (Windows), disable sata drive 2 (Linux Mint) and vice versa. Neither systems can see the disabled drive so it's a robust enough mechanism.

hawker1986 · 2025-08-23T09:10:42+0100

Personally I would just consolidate all the old small drives into a single large external drive to save having loads of them around and plug it in when you need it.
Multibooting isn’t a big deal, no need for multiple drives can all be done from partitions on the same drive if you want and then choosing which OS to load after post. There are various tools to set that up, but it’s been many years since it did it…

Lee James · 2025-08-24T11:24:40+0100

Thanks for the great replies guys! :-)

hornetstinger said:
What type of drive SATA or nvme?

SATA (all HDDs except for my OS drive which is SSD).

hawker1986 said:
Multibooting isn’t a big deal, no need for multiple drives can all be done from partitions on the same drive

Interesting, I thought the boot drive always had to be the primary partition? Nevertheless, I don't want multiple operating systems to be accessible at once in case I get a virus on one, it would infect both. My whole reason for wanting two operating systems is security. One will be used only for web browsing, the other will be offline, used for everything else.

jokerguv said:
I do this by enabling/disabling required sata drives in the bios (Asus B650E-F). Don't think NVME drives can be controlled this way (outside of server/workstation class boards).

Great idea, thanks! (Though I would worry that a virus could somehow mount it from Windows. Not sure if this is possible?)

I've decided I will:
1) Try to ditch all the old smaller drives, to keep my drives down to just 6, so they can all be physically connected.
2) Then I'll use the BIOS to enable/disable the ones I want.

Thanks!