Hard drive transplant

[jhartley111]

I am wanting to put a PC together to run emulators on my living room TV and I'm trying to do it on the cheap. I'm thinking of taking the PC out of my arcade cab and just swapping out the hard drive. I'll be using different controller hardware with the new setup, probably a wireless control pad. If this works out, I'd like to be able to move the PC from the living room to the cab as needed and just plug in whichever hard drive and controllers I need.

I would have completely separate operating system and software on each hard drive and neither will know of the other's existence.

I can't think of a reason why this won't work (other than being a pain in the ass plugging and unplugging stuff constantly). Can anybody think of a reason why this won't work?

Thanks

[saurian333]

Nope, no reason that wouldn't work.  The concept is frequently used in the "real world."

You may want to look at a hard drive caddy to make your life easier.  It's a device that fits into a 5.25" bay that is designed specifically for what you are describing.  Here's an example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817604003&cm_re=hard_drive_caddy-_-17-604-003-_-Product

There are lots of different ones available, and you'd just want to make sure you get an extra caddy that fits the bay you get.  You put each of your drives in one, and just swap them out.  Some require a keyed lock, some don't.  Usually the ones with locks need to be in the "locked" position to power on.

I have a somewhat crappy Kingwin brand one with several caddies.  It's not the best quality, but it still works quite well for this purpose.  (Kingwin does make some good stuff as well, the one I have is just a bit low-end.)

[jhartley111]

Thanks for the ideas, saurian333! As of now, the project has the "green light". I think I'll try it first just pluging and unplugging and if it works out, I'll probably get one of those caddies. I had no idea there was such a thing!