Member Avatar for bunnyfugger

Hi,

I'm no hardware genius so I hope I can communicate what I'm wanting to do.

I currently have two HDD on an ASUS P5K SE motherboard and a 500w PSU. I have three partitions on the first (500GB) drive, C: (Win XP Pro), D: (Documents), E: (Somewhere to put stuff).

The second drive (500GB) holds an image (via Clonezilla Live) of the first drive which I update roughly weekly. Between taking images, I unplug both cables to the second drive as I don't want it exposed to the internet (call me paranoid :-)

I'm getting sick of opening the case and connecting/disconnecting the second drive though. Firstly, the connections aren't easy to access, and secondly I'm worried that I may disturb other connections in the case. Like I said, I'm no hardware genius and if I did happen to knock/break something I'm not sure that I could find the problem and correct it.

What I'd LIKE to do is have a switch for the second drive so as that I can simply throw the switch to enable it, turn on PC and boot from Clonezilla CD, image the first drive onto the second, power down, switch second drive OFF, and reboot Windows off the first drive again.

Now, I don't know whether this would be the ideal solution, and I'm open to other suggestions.

My question is:
Is the configuration I've described above (ie two drives with one of them switchable ON/OFF) possible, OR do I need to approach the problem of isolating my second HDD from the internet in another way altogether?

Thanks for taking the time to read my long post and I look forward to reading any replies...

Regards...

Edited by bunnyfugger because: Typos!
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Generated

Brief, practical addendum that expands on the replies from , and and focuses on safety, speed and a reliable “switchable” workflow.

Best options (ranked by balance of speed, convenience and safety)

  • Removable hot‑swap bay / 5.25" drive caddy: keeps the drive internal and at native SATA speeds while allowing quick physical removal. If true hot‑swap is required, confirm motherboard/BIOS AHCI+hotplug support first; otherwise always power down before inserting/removing.
  • External dock/enclosure with eSATA or USB3 (if available): almost as fast as internal SATA (eSATA ≈ internal SATA throughput), but fully removable when powered down or unplugged.
  • Inline power switch on the drive’s power lead (cheap): cuts only power (not data). Safe if the PC is powered off when toggling; unsafe to switch while the drive is mounted unless the controller/OS explicitly support hot‑plug.

Safe, no-surprises workflow for a power‑switch approach (matches the original goal of flipping a switch before imaging)

  1. Install an inline switch on the drive’s power connector only (use SATA‑power or Molex‑to‑SATA adapter); do not switch the data cable.
  2. Keep the switch OFF during normal OS boot so the disk is unpowered and invisible.
  3. To image: power down, flip switch ON, boot Clonezilla (or bootable imaging environment) and perform the image.
  4. Power down completely after imaging, flip switch OFF, then boot the regular OS.
    Note: toggling power while the drive is active can corrupt data; enabling AHCI/hotplug on a machine already installed in IDE/legacy mode may cause the OS not to boot without driver changes—check the motherboard manual before changing BIOS settings.

Front vs rear USB performance

  • Front ports are often wired to the same controller as rear ports, but front hubs or shared card‑reader buses can reduce throughput. USB2 practical speeds are far lower than SATA/eSATA; for large disk images prefer SATA/eSATA or USB3 where possible.

Recommendation summary

  • For the fastest, most convenient solution pick a hot‑swap caddy or eSATA dock. For a low‑cost, simple switch that matches the original “flip and image” idea, an inline power switch is workable—but always power down when toggling unless the board explicitly supports hot‑plug.

Recommended Answers

All 9 Replies

Member Avatar for caperjack

call me paranoid, your paranoid ! really .
what i would suggest is what i have ,a usb device for the drive and make it external

Edited by caperjack because: n/a
Member Avatar for kaninelupus

Would it be better to get an external drive for saving your disk images to, rather than the hassles and risks involved in trying to use your secondary drive?

The advantage with that, is that you could then keep any misc files which you don't need backed up in the basic disk image on the secondary drive (backing those up separately), keeping any image of the primary drive as small as need be. An external drive is also much easier to unplug when not required :)

Member Avatar for bunnyfugger

Hi caperjack and Kaninelupus,

Thanks for the replies.

Please excuse me, but I should have added that I already have an external HDD (WD passport 320GB) and was initially doing as you suggest. However, I only had 250GB of my 500GB drive partitioned and the other 250GB was unused. The imaging process was taking a little over an hour to complete and (at the time) I was happy with that.

Later, I installed the second (internal HDD) for images, and the process completed in a little under 15 minutes (yippee!). It is this time saving that makes the internal HDD for images attractive to me.

I accept that the external HDD is the simplest solution and I connect mine via USB on my PC's front panel. I have 3 front panel USBs. One on a 52-in-1 card reader which seems very slow; and two others with adjacent microphone and speaker plugs. I connect my External HDD to one of latter when taking an image.

If I connected the external HDD to (say) a USB at the REAR of my PC, would that be faster than those on the front panel? (I'm guessing not).

Also, I'm not sure that Clonezilla will image a 500GB drive onto a 320GB.

Correct me if I'm wrong...
I suppose that if I want to image onto the second internal drive then I'll just have to leave it connected permanently. If I decide to go along the External HDD route then I'll have to buy a new 500GB drive?

Thanks again, I appreciate you giving up your time to help.

Regards...

Member Avatar for caperjack

i think you could just make a image of the drive for when you need to reinstall windows ,and just backup created data on a storage drive ,don't see the need of creating image all the time . fail to see the need for weekly image update

Edited by caperjack because: n/a
commented: Good asvice and saved me doing unnecessary backups. Cheers >:> +1
Member Avatar for bunnyfugger

Ok caperjack, thanks for your help and I'll try what you suggest.

Best Regards...
Bunny
>:>

Member Avatar for caperjack

your welcome .

Member Avatar for whisk3rs

If you are paranoid about your data being "exposed to the internet", try encrypting it with TrueCrypt.

As for shutting off a drive, you could hack the molex connector (or get a plug somewhere) and install a breaker switch outside the case. But that seems like overkill.

Member Avatar for kaninelupus

Jst one last point Bunny - Clonezilla only images used disk space... ie, if there is 200GB of data on said drive, then that is all that will be "cloned"

Member Avatar for KevinMartin

First of all make sure the old hard drive is set to slave and the new hard drive in the new computer is set to master. Then you can get the files off the old hard drive.

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