Patent ID: 6480350
Filing Date: 2002-11-12
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A hard disk drive selector, mounted permanently in a single computer system for coupling one of plurality of hard disk drives to the hard disk drive selector, prior to booting the computer system to occupy a single, logical hard disk drive position during a single computer system use session, comprising:Three component parts, a master control component, a power control component and a command/address control component; wherein the components are multi-pole, multi-throw switching elements with predetermined numbers of poles to switch all circuits in each bus segment of the computer system they are used in and with predetermined number of throws to control the selection of the desired hard disk drive attached to the hard disk drive selector; the components are configurable; a) the master control component is accessible from the outside of the computer system's case by the user and synchronously controls the operation of the power control and the command/address control components by causing these components to close their circuits to an user selected hard disk drive to place the hard disk drive in an operational mode and open their circuits to any non-selected disk drives from the hard disk drives connected to the hard disk drive selector to place the non-selected disk drives in a non-operational mode; wherein the master control component is operated by a switch that has a removable key as a security feature; b) the power control component is coupled between the computer system's electrical supply bus and the power supply terminal of each of the plurality of the hard disk drives; and close the circuit from the computer system's power supply to the user selected hard disk drive and open the circuit to any not-selected disk drives from the hard disk drives connected to the hard disk drive selector; c) the command/address control component within a computer system bus is coupled between a hard disk drive host adapter and plurality of the hard disk drives to close the command carrying and address carrying circuits from the hard disk drive host adapter to the user selected hard disk drive and to open the command carrying and address carrying circuits from the hard disk drive host adapter to not-selected hard disk drives connected to the hard disk drive selector.