Looking for a way to cold swap SSDs with a device

[kursain]

I'm working on a project in which we need a way to swap between 2 SSDs that connect to a PC using a single SATA port. The reason why we need this specific functionality is that the PCs we're working with only work using a designated SATA port and will only boot from a given port.

 

We're currently swapping the drives by hand and reconnecting SATA cables but we'd eventually want to connect this electronically so we can control the swapping remotely. Ideally, we would only need to run 1 SATA power and data cable out of this "enclosure" and be able to swap between the drives, essentially a "relay" but for the SATA connections.

 

I tried looking around for products but can't seem to find anything that would suit these requirements. I do have experience with single-board microcontrollers so I should be able to find a way to make a physical-swapping device (eg. button selectors) into a cloud-accessible one, if need be. If anyone can point me to the right place to look, or tell me if this is even technically feasible, that would be great! Thank you!

[RandomLegoBrick]

This seems very unnecessary, if the bios is weird and wont let you boot from other volumes you could see if a Multiboot loader like GRUB or Clover suite your needs. Both are pieces of software that handle which operating system on which drive is initialized.

 

Clover is much easier to set up:

(https://github.com/CloverHackyColor/CloverBootloader)

You could install clover on the sata port that the computer will boot to and then place the other operating systems on separate drives (even connected to a pcie sata expansion card). Then whenever you start the machine clover will let you chose which system to use. (ofc you could set it to automatically boot one and all sorts of neat stuff)

 

Making a physical switch is going to be very difficult since there are so many factors to designing cables. I do know though from experience that in industrial settings people really really dont like adding new software lol. If I had to create some sort of switch it'd definatly be as simple possible. some small solid state relays might be ok. You really only need to switch 4 wires in the data cable (pins 2, 3, 5, and 6 afaik) since the rest are ground.  It'd probably be best to design a custom pcb for the switch in order to prevent any possible loss in data integrity from inconsistent wirelengths or something. I'm no electrical engineer, just a software nerd and occasional hardware tinkerer so this could all be wildly wrong but maybe it can get you going in the right direction.

 

Heres a resource I found that might be useful: https://www.delkin.com/blog/sata-serial-ata/

[jaslion]

2 hours ago, kursain said:

We're currently swapping the drives by hand and reconnecting SATA cables but we'd eventually want to connect this electronically so we can control the swapping remotely. Ideally, we would only need to run 1 SATA power and data cable out of this "enclosure" and be able to swap between the drives, essentially a "relay" but for the SATA connections.

Fyi sata has like 20 or so plug cycles and the cable will degrade and break same with the port. So euhh stop doing that now.

 

Can't you just dual boot from a drive? Should be possible basically just boot into a bootloader and select the os needed.

[worstalentscout]

On 2/15/2024 at 4:40 PM, jaslion said:

Fyi sata has like 20 or so plug cycles and the cable will degrade and break same with the port. So euhh stop doing that now.

 

Can't you just dual boot from a drive? Should be possible basically just boot into a bootloader and select the os needed.

 

so after 20 plug in/out cycles............the SATA connector on the SSD will no longer work ??

[jaslion]

4 minutes ago, worstalentscout said:

 

so after 20 plug in/out cycles............the SATA connector on the SSD will no longer work ??

It will start to be damaged and eventually fail

 

 

[kokosnh]

For now use short data SATA extension, to not plug it and unplug, all the time from drives.
Just remember to use the shortest one you can find (signal integrity), and do buy spares.

 

I do not know of a DATA sata SWITCH, there are sata splitters, that do work similar, but they required SATA controller, to support SATA host mode. 

But, if you only want it to work in Serial ATA Port Selector mode with one drive, then it's possible, that it could work, but that only maybe (I can't guarantee it, as it's just so rare case, that I don't know anything about it). I do know that they have that mode, but I do not know, if the SATA host mode is required, for the Selector mode to work.
Maybe it isn't, and it would just work.

[kursain]

I'm with everyone here on this process being tedious and destructive but due to the nature of the PCs I'm working with, they're quite locked down and there isn't much room to work around the BIOS settings they come with. To go into a bit more detail -- each drive contains a bootloader and software that are intertwined with the hardware and is very difficult, if not impossible, to configure in such a way that the PC + other hardware would play nicely with a modified drive that is partitioned. I can't into the specifics of the contents of the drives as there's some legal grey area surrounding copyright that I'd like to keep on the downlow.

 

I'll definitely get some extensions in the meantime while we find a solution for this problem, thank you for the heads up on the rated plug cycles.

[kursain]

This product here looks like exactly what we need: https://www.coolgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/SW-SATA2X4-user-manual.pdf

 

If anyone knows where I can source something like this that would be amazing!