wanted: Hard Drive Selector- Romtec Trios

[darthbader]

There used to be a product called the Trios. It is a hard drive selector that works with IDE and SATA drives. The manufacturer was a company called Romtec USA. Web site was www.romtecusa.com I cannot find this product on new egg or any other retailer. I went to the romtec site and the server refueses access to the site. I guess they are out of business. Does anyone know of another product that does the same thing????

 

[darkknight187]

i believe this should be within the wanted section of the classifieds but you don't have access to the classifieds to know that

 

[darthbader]

Yes its a wanted item. But I was also was wondering if anyone knew what happened to Romtec and if there is another product that is similar.

 

[zip22]

yeah i think this is a fine place for it. i tried searching, and found a lot on that brand and specific piece of hardware, but nothing on any that were different. what are you trying to do? there are some boot managers like LILO (i think) that let you choose which OS you want to load.

 

[kayson]

You could always make one yourself, although it may be a little difficult...

 

[darthbader]

I have a SATA hard drive and an IDE hard drive in my computer. I have windows xp installed to my SATA drive and Mepis Linux installed to my IDE drive. I tried to set up my grub bootloader to point to my xp installation on the SATA drive but it does not work. I tried doing it several different ways but still no luck. Linux has issues with SATA drives so i figured that I could get it working by using a ROMTEC TRIOS but I cant find one except on ebay. Plus I wanted to be sure that you can hook up a SATA and a IDE drive to a ROMTEC at the same time. (not sure if you have to use all one type of drive for it to work.) so you see I dont want to spend the money unless its a good solution to my problem.

If anyone here has any other solutions please feel free to let me know.
The funny thing is that when I boot to linux, Linux recognizes my SATA drive and allows me access to the files on it. I just have the problem in my boot loader. My current solution is rather annoying. I have to go to my bios and change which drive is my primary drive to get windows to load. To get linux to load I have to shut down and go to the bios and change it again to the IDE drive as Primary. It drives me nuts.

 

[dark_15]

I found this on froogle...

Hope that helps!

 

[zip22]

no, they're all out of stock.

 

[darkknight187]

http://www.g4tv.com/screensavers/features/43190/Build_a_HardDrive_Switcher.html DIY with video goodness

I thought i had remembered seeing this on TechTV back when it was good and i still got satellite

*edit* after deciding to watch it's not exactly what you need but i would say it gives a good idea on possibly just switching the molex so only the drive you need powers up.

there could also be another ingenius idea that could solve your problem in that manner but i would say if you think you can do it give it a shot the parts will be easier to find and cheaper.

 

[darthbader]

its a great idea however i dont think that will work with my current configuration. I am using a SATA drive for my windows XP and an IDE drive for my Linux drive so they are not attached to the same cable.

 

[darthbader]

are there any other solutions out there?????

 

[orionlion82]

from what i know of linux ( very little) in your settings is a place to muck around with the boot loader... have a look...mine would not boot to XP untill i changed the setting... you might not need hardware at all...

 

[darthbader]

I messed with grub and tried a bunch of different things. I was on a linux forum and tried all suggestions that were offered andmy brother in law is a linux junkie and he messed with it to no avail. So we concluded that hardware is the only answer for now, until the linux distributions are more compatible with SATA drives