Switch to turn disks off ?

Hiya,


I am planning to rig up a switch in front of the 2 molex connectors that feed my 2 raid drives. I only have video editing footage on these drives and i only video edit some of the time .... so when im playing games/email and whatever else they are just creating heat and noise.

Anyone have any advice about how to achieve this ? Is it okay ?

I need to know what sort of switch i need to get (what wattage/ohms ???) and if it'll be safe and also if it'll be okay to extend the molex wire so that the swtitch can be mounted at teh front of the case ?



regards



Rich

I tried doing this (sorta) by unplugging my second drive whenever it wasn't in use. It didn't work out too well. Sometimes it would be fine, but other times it would lock my system. If I were you, I'd look for a software solution to this. What are the models/manufacturers of your drives? Check their site for some hard drive utlities, a lot of them offer software that will slow disk rotation down when the drives arent in use.

if i manually unplug them by quickly opening my case (but leave the ide cable in) then my system works fine .....

I have 2 spare rack mounts and i could put them in those and just turn the key to teh off position but i dont want any rack ounts visible (i am going stealth !) and besides, these rives will prolly end up in silent drive housings.




cheers



Rich

As long as you aren't powered up when you switch, you should be okay. This is definitely not a hot swap type of setup. Safety-wise, I'd recommend placing the switch on one of the negative feeds to the molex.(BTW, I've never tried this, so you take your own chances here)