Can I swap HDD's?

[hellokitty[hk]]

Hello, I've got two little 10GB hdd's left over.

Right now, I have a single 500GB SATA HDD I have three partitions, one for storage (irrelevant), one for windows, and one for Linux. I am currently using GRUB.

I am wondering if it is safe for me to remove the 500GB hdd, install a 10GB hdd with an os, and then switch them back later. I'd like to play around with my 10GB hdd, but I don't want to re-partition, nor do I really have a ton of space left. I think it would be nice to take my 500GB out, put the 10GB in, and play around with different Linux distros and stuff.

So will that cause problems?

 

[Leeky]

If the OS' are both on your 500GB Hard disk, then if you remove it you'll then have free run.

Nothing will be an issue on the condition you make no hardware changes after removing your 500GB disk, and everything is the same when you re-connect it.

You'll be free to play til the cows come home with you 10GB hard disks then.

This is all based on the assumption your just swapping physical disks, and not actually adding them together in the same system.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

This is all based on the assumption your just swapping physical disks, and not actually adding them together in the same system.

Yep.
Do I need to plug into the same SATA port each time? Well I probably will anyway.
To clarify, I mean always plugging my 500GB into SATA0, and the 10GB into SATA1.

 

[SNGX1275]

You have a 10GB SATA drive? Or an IDE->Sata adapter?

In any case, what you could do is simply disconnect the power to your 500GB, and then connect the 10GB, then either switch the BIOS boot order or hit whatever key during POST to bring up the boot menu so you can boot off the 10GB.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

You have a 10GB SATA drive? Or an IDE->Sata adapter?

Sorry, I meant just IDE. Does that change things?

 

[SNGX1275]

Nope. But you may not have a motherboard based boot screen that allows you to select the IDE drive, so you'd just have to change it in the BIOS. You could still leave the sata connected, just pull the power connection to it.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Hmm, sounds good, I'll look through my BIOS.