Wanting to setup selectable groups of SATA drives

[s0me0ne]

I'm thinking of getting a SATA switch, this will allow me to switch drives before powerup and keep my OSes completely separate and no messy dual-boot or 1 hdd going down or getting a virus and taking down all my setups.

The problem is I would like one of my setups to have 2 SATA drives and the other to only use 1. And when I switch the device from say "Setup1" to "Setup2", to use only the drives to that setup.

For example
Setup1 would have:
1 60gb SSD drive (for windows bootup)
1 250gb SATA drive (for data only for setup1)

Setup2 would have:
1 500gb SATA drive (just for setup2)

I want to be able to switch between those 2 setups with that switch, but the addition of that extra drive on Setup1 makes the deal impossible from what I can figure out.

Keep in mind I'll be sharing the other 2 SATA slots for my optical drives by just going straight to the motherboard and not using that switch, since my dvd and cd drives need to be shared of course.

 

[Antman]

Don't put [1 250gb SATA drive (for data only for setup1)] on the SATA switch.

In setup2, use diskmgmt.msc to remove the drive letter for [1 250gb SATA drive (for data only for setup1)]

 

[s0me0ne]

Is there another way? I'm not sure if I trust Windows to keep that data drive hidden. Setup2 will probably get spyware and maybe a virus from time to time, because I test out lots of software out on it. I guess I was wanting a hardware way of keeping them separate.

 

[Antman]

I looked around for a SATA switch that would on/off two or more drives simultaneously. You could get two switches.

My BIOS supports dual configs. I could boot to BIOS and switch betwen configs that either enable or disable controller/drive sets.

You could get a hot swap bay (internal) and just turn off the drive.

You could extend the power connector outside of the case.

You could come to my house and help me move a china cabinet and a display case.