Removable HD Enclosures

[Warmtoast]

Advice please.
I’m looking for a removable HDD enclosure to take a 2.5-ins SSD that I can easily insert and remove, the idea being that I want to have one SSD with Windows 10 on it and have another SSD with Windows 7. These SSDs being inserted as required for the time when I want to use either Win 10 or Win 7 as OS.
The HDD enclosure should able to fit into a spare (empty) CD/DVD front enclosure on the computer with the caddy holding the appropriate 2.5-ins SSD with OS being inserted as necessary. Ideally the enclosure would be ‘hard wired’ to the existing SATA connectors on the motherboard.
TIA


WT

[esa-aardvark]

Something like this perhaps ?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item-img/Hot-Swap-Dual-Bay-2-5-SATA-III-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-HDD-SSD-Tray-Caddy-Internal/32706346909.html?spm=2114.10010108.1000017.2.qBJI0i

[Saab Dastard]

Put your SSDs into USB 3 external caddies. get a good PCI-E USB 3 controller card and front 3.5" bay with 2 x USB 3 slots. Configure the BIOS to boot off USB. Install the OS x 2. Job done.

USB 3 is similar speed to SATA 3, so no real speed disadvantage.

Alternatively, dual boot?

SD

[Bushfiva]

SD, I seem to remember installing Windows 7 on a USB 3.0 port could be fun, partly because third-party vendors had to write their own USB3.0 drivers for Win 7and a couple of them introduced registry problems. I think FTDI highlighted this issue first. Also, the USB 3.0 driver would install as Base rather than BBE. An easy fix if you're Einstein. Things may have magically improved since then, but I'd probably start with the Win10 install to give me a boot drive from which to fart around with the Win7 drive.

Or run Win7 as a VM...

Anyway, WT might also consider a dual- or quad-drive enclosure with a drive switch, assuming both drives don't need to be accessible at the same time. There are switches that fit in the floppy drive slot.

[Tech Guy]

We use these (https://www.scan.co.uk/products/icy-dock-express-cage-4-bay-25-sas-sata-hdd-and-ssd-hot-swap-cage-for-525-bay). Allows 4 x 2.5" HDDs/SSDs to fit into a 5 1/4" bay. Drives are hot swappable, but are not in removable caddies.

[Bushfiva]

That wouldn't work for Warmtoast, I think, since although four SATA connectors are brought out to the backplane, only one common power connector is available.

[Warmtoast]

Thanks for the advice chaps. A bit of Googling and this cheap and cheerful piece of kit will meet my needs - I hope.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dshot%C2%AE-Sata-Aluminum-Caddy-Mobile/dp/B014M0RF6U/ref=sr_1_5?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1483651337&sr=1-5&keywords=dshot

Thanks

WT