One way to do it is to have your BIOS boot from the desired drive. I haven't done it for a while but your operating system (Windows xxx) will generally not allow you to make more than one drive Bootable (Active). What you'd probably have to do initially is power up only one drive and install your operating system, programs, etc. Using the "Properties" capability in Windows EXplorer (or My Computer) name the C drive something unique like "Trading". Shutdown. Disconnect the drive you just set up and provide power to the other drive. Don't worry about the data cable, it can remain connected to both drives. Install the operating systems and minimal set of programs. Name the drive "Testing" or whatever. If only one HD is powered up the BIOS will make it the Boot drive so you should not have to change the BIOS during the initial set up. Shutdown. Connect power cable to the other drive. Both drives should now have power cables connected. Restore power to the computer. Go to setup (normally hit the "Delete" or F2 key during boot). The BIOS will let you select the disk from which you want to boot. When you boot the operating system used will be on the C drive. The C drive is always the boot drive. The other drive will be the D drive. You will ignore the D drive. All programs will have been installed on the "current" C drive and that is where you will operate. The D will be there but you will not do anything with it. When you want to use the "other" C drive, shutdown. Restart and tell the BIOS to select the other drive as the boot drive (normally the drives are called HD0 and HD1 by the BIOS). When the system boots the C and D drives have swapped. Once again, you ignore the D drive. I haven't had to do this for a while since I've been making so much money trading I was able to buy a second machine for $800. One caveat - your PC must have a fairly recent motherboard (about 2 years) as I think that is when they started allowing you to select the boot hard drive via BIOS. I'd check my BIOS before I tried any of this. Installing operating systems and programs is a chore and a bore.
Flight Club An old fashion keep it simple way would be to hold delete during bootup and switch which drive to boot from. Use C for work and D for play. Go to Tech guy help website and run a search for "duel boot hard drives" and read the many helpful posts on that topic. http://forums.techguy.org should be the url. great place. Many use 2 operating systems too. One 4 play, another4 work agpilot
I believe programs like PartionMagic come with boot managers (BootMagic) that can do what you want (mark the other disk's partition as hidden) but frankly it seems like overkill - I guess it depends how "invisible" you want it, the only way to make it 100% invisible is a switch that electrically disconnects, anything else (done via software) and both drives will be visible to both operating systems at some level (e.g. to programs like partition magic). If you dont need a high tech solution why not just unassign the drive letter for the drive you dont want accessible in each operating system - that will prevent most programs from accessing the drive you want invisible. You can assign no drive letter (or unassign them) from within XP computer manager/disk management.
There are two very easy solutions both hardware implemented...to boot from different hard drives at different times, use a product like Winnix which allows you to choose the boot drive. 2nd solution...get an internal hard drive carrier that allows for the quick swapping (pull out/ push in) of hard drives within a caddy both of these are readily available from computer parts stores, not comp, bb, etc
configure the bios to hide the hard drive (enter the bios configuration upon computer boot by pressing Del key, and select None where your current hard drive is). ps you can install 2 operating systems on the same drive, on different partitions, if you want to have an OS just for testing applications.
I did this with a switch that controls the power for my drives. I switch it one way for my "trading" computer, and the other for my gaming/regular stuff one. When I'm trading, one drive is powered up, and when I want my other "computer", I shut down, switch the switch, and boot to the other drive. I had to splice some power cables and solder them to the switch, but it all worked out. If you do this, get a slide switch, not a toggle. You don't want to accidently bump the switch and change drives while the computer is on. I found some really cool fighter-pilot style covered toggles, but they all were momentary on switches.
i don't understand why you guys don't install 2 operating systems on the same drive. why all the mechanical 'switching'. just install 2 operating systems, each on a different partition - it's equally effective.
TGregg, can you be more specific about the switch, maybe website that sells them? And how you wire them out of the box? Thanks.