How do i turn off second harddrive

Paul_Robson

Paul_Robson

Paul_Robson

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26 May 2005
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Wallasey
Hi can someone please tell me how to turn off my second hard drvie so windows xp pro or vista doesnt see it at all.I have a P5Q Pro motherboard.I can choose which to boot from and install an OS onto but when windows boots up it still lets me fully access the second hard drive, and i dont want that.I dont wantto keep opening up my case and pulling the sata cable out, i just want the option in the bios where u can completely disable a second drive. Thanks..........
 
If you've installed two versions of Windows on different drives you normally have to have both drives connected to be able to boot the OS on the second drive.

You can hide a drive so that it doesn't appear in My Computer which may do what you want. TweakUI will do it on XP and I'm sure there's a similar method for Vista.

Otherwise a externally swappable drive bay may be an option.
 
Ah right, on my old pc the motherboard was an Aus A8n32 sli, and i could turn off sata ports 3 and 4, so if i had one drive in either port 1 or 2 then my drive wouldnt show up. Im messing around with linux/ubuntu/vista/xp, so i thought if i had windwso xp pro on my main drive and put ubuntu on the other hard drvie, then i could just turn off a hard drive as and when i wanted and just boot the one i wanted. As it is when i choose a certain drive and boot up any OS, both drives can be seen. :(
 
most recent baords I have had have had the option to disable hard disc channels, not allways individually. the location varies though, you should find something in bios
 
Alternative look into using a boot manager ... tend to come as "bonus extra" with partitioning software etc. With these I think you should can probably set up which partitions are to be active or hidden for each boot option.
 
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