Adding Switches To Internal Hard Drives, power off when not using Options

[deacon187]

after reading the aim virus crap that the idiot posted the damn virus, i have also been sent links in AIM from buddies that took me to a download promt, of coarse i didnt download it but my sister just recently got a virus that screwed up her entire computer and infected all 3 of her hard drives

i was thinking about adding a few switches to the power cables going to my many hard drives, 5 in total as a precautionary messure cause sometimes my wife does dumb things on the computer, i wouldnt care about loosing my little 40gig with windows on it if something like this were to happen, but my 3 250 gigs loaded with important xbox/movie/pictures/music and such, i would hate to get fuxed due a virus

i know i would have to shut down the pc everytime to turn on the hard drives but does anyone see this causing more than problems than its worth, do you think i can end up with some data corruption or anything doing this

i dont use the hard drive with all my xbox related stuff that often so having 1, 2 or 3 drives turned off here and there would actually help keep the pc a little cooler as well

[quall]

So, are you going to do a virus scan every time before you power on the HDD switch? I mean, if you don't, then it is more than pointless. And I would do what you suggested. Add some external switches to the power cords themselves.

However, I would just make a power chain and put on 1 or 2 switches that would turn them all off, instead of one at a time.

[Gruce]

Baby I just made your Day:

Link

Some are hot-swapable, not sure if this one is, but have a look around, a MUCH better idea than switches.

[deacon187]

i wouldnt run a virus scan everytime it would take to long, actually i have faith in my anti virus software, my sister didnt have any anti virus software installed at all so its her own fault, at first i thought of doing these external switches because of her virus problem, but now its more towards some extra cooling, 5 hard drives running 24-7 gives off a lot of heat and since 2-3 of them i dont use on an everyday basis more like once a week, im gonna go and add some switches

do hard drives use both 12 and 5 volt lines, should i switch both yellow and red wires?

that link to ebay isnt what im looking for but thanks, it is a pretty nice idea i might check into something like that for a dual hard drive mod with xbox

[Psykomantis00]

You switch the negative, not the posotive.

My friend came over to my house last night to show me his new car mod... I gave him my old neons that I had on my car before it was wrecked, 2 of them broke, and now he has the two that survived on there. Well he has no idea on how to wire anything at all apparently, even tho he claims to have wired his house!

He wired the lights to a house switch... and no only that instead of switching the negative... idk how to explain this, but he somehow hooked the positive and negative to the pattery to the switch, then also to the light... and the cable cought on fire... I told him he was a moron and then he tried to tell me that they worked before he put the switch on... of coarse! because he has no idea how a switch works lol. Anyway, shouldnt be that hard. I do this to one of my hard drives that has movies on it that I dont want someone to see so what I do is just unplug the power cable, and plug it in when i need it. Hasnt hurt it yet, and does the same thing as a switch basically only more work and works for hot swapping, just leave the ide cable plugged in or you could fry your ide channel.