sata cable with on/off switch?

[Izlude]

Hey all, strange question, are there any sata cables with an on/off switch? :P  or rather, a sata power cable with one?  It would make it easy for me to make sure a certain drive is turned off while booting..

The comedy of errors:

I've got Win10 with Optane (a soft-raid?)  Anyway, I had to install Win7 on a separate drive to run this old program. VM is not an option as this software is HASP protected and I've got a few things going on there...

While booting win7, I walked away (and completely FORGOT not to let chkdsk run)... well it did, it ran at startup and obliterated Win10's files because Win7 "thinks" the drive is damaged, when in actuality it's only seeing what is an incomplete RAID... so it did its thing.. can't boot Win10. Reinstalling, luckily I backup every time I do something like this :P  So no loss, except for 2 hours reinstalling all my programs and putting the settings back.  The switch would be an easy alternative than having to manually plug/unplug the sata cable from the mobo.

 

I did get around to disabling automatic check by removing the values from bootexecute in the registry, but not sure if that's a permanent solution to disabling checking. Any other option to make sure it doesn't try again? (permanently)

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

You could use eSATA. Where the device will have an on/off switch. External power.

 

Like so: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-eSATA-Aluminum-Enclosure-EC-ESU4K/dp/B000HJ99LA/ref=sr_1_14?c=ts&dchild=1&keywords=Computer+Hard+Drive+Enclosures&qid=1600986708&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_browse-bin%3A2886986011&s=pc&sr=1-14&ts_id=160354011

 

(there's several different types)

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Perhaps the hard disk drive could be installed into a 5.25" bay inside of a removable drive cage.  When the drive is not meant to be used, eject it slightly.

 

A better solution would be to set up a dedicated PC to run Windows 7 with the copy-protected software.  That machine could be updated to the last update for that EOL operating system, and then disconnected from your network so it could be used safely as an offline only device.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

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