"Mark Lloyd" wrote:
Timothy Daniels wrote:

"Mark Lloyd" wrote:
Timothy Daniels wrote:

[snip]

Or, you can do as I do: Feed each of your internal hard drives'
power cables through DPST micro toggle switches and enable or disable
the HD by switching its power on or off.

Is there some benefit to using separate switches rather than one multi-
position switch?


Sometimes. In my situation, I wanted to keep 2 HDs running so that
I could copy clones of the OS on HD0 to HD1 or HD2, then shut down the
destination HD. But I also used separate switches because they would
fit the existing 1/4" holes in the front of the case. I didn't want to
do any drilling through the case for fear that some loose metal chip
would short something out. BTW, I actually used DPDT switches wired as
DPST. You could probably get away with switching just a single pole, but
I didn't want to experiment.

*TimDaniels*

I haven't done it yet, but wasn't going to drill through the case but
through a small piece of plastic that covers one of the unused 5.25-inch
bays.

I suppose you switched both +5V and +12V.


Yup, I switch 'em both. I assume that the 12V is for the motor, and
the 5V is for the electronics, and I switch 'em on the positive side of the
hard drive. I don't know if that is the minimal operation, but I didn't want
to experiment with switching just one voltage. Be careful, though. I got
one connection wrong the on the first try, and I burnt a fuse on the circuit
card and lost a HD. There was a quiet "snap" and the mild smell of burnt
circuitry. :-)

*TimDaniels*