disable a hard drive

[chris_wilson_51]

Is there a way of disabling a hard drive while the computer is active? I have a removable hard drive rack to allow me to switch storage drives but every time I want to swap it I need to switch the computer off.

Does anyone know of software of hardware to allow me to do this?

 

[horris1st]

Wont windows XP do this for you, in the remove hardward in the bottom right hand corner of the start bar? It looks like a green arrow....

 

[Toshiro]

I think that's only for USB devices... My digital cameral, MP3 player, and all my game pads work that way... but my old parallel-port drives (old ZIP100 drive, old external CD-ROM unit, etc), have to be removed while the PC is powered down.

EDIT: I forgot it's for PCMCIA cards as well. And it's not just WinXP, my Win98 laptop does it too.

I believe the term for this is "Hot Swap" and as far as I know parallel port devices are not Hot Swappable.

Assuming Chris's setup is external and uses a parallel port.
If it's internal, using any of the standard internal ports (IDE, SCSI, etc) then no, you can't disable it while the comp's running.

 

[billzhills]

You are looking for a RAID array.

See:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.htm

Also:
http://www.arcoide.com/products/raidcontrollers/525baymount.html
http://www.arcoide.com/technology/index.html