Trios II Multi Drive Selector - Page 3

My System Configuration

My main goal is to be able to have Mandrake Linux 9.1 and Windows XP on the same machine. I wanted to attempt to connect the Trios II to the onboard Promise ATA RAID connection but since those...ahem...nice people...ahem...at Promise refuse to write drivers for Linux, I couldn't. I'm only using 2 hard drives and have elected to put my slave drive on a ATA133 PCI card (I like to have my OS drive on a channel "all by it's lonesome") I will be installing a 3rd OS but haven't decided which yet. The Trios II is connected to the primary IDE.

How Does It Work and Does It Work?

Yup, 'nuff said! Just kidding! It works like a charm. Before you power up you push one of 2 buttons on the control panel until the indicator light is on the drive(s) you desire to use. Then you power up. That's it! Your operating systems don't even know the Trios II is there. This isn't a magic device that allows you to switch operating systems on the fly. You do have to power down before switching. The good thing is that because the non-booting HD is actually off, both OS's are safe from being hosed by the other. This is especially important to those who want to use Windows and Linux on the same machine. The protection that each OS offers is often null and void while in another OS on that machine. This can be especially worrisome on the Linux side of things because the viruses that Windows gets can destroy data on the Linux partitions/drives too.

One person who shall remain nameless (Patrick at The Screen Savers) , said he couldn't install an OS while the hard drive was connected to the Trios. I'm not sure what kind of problem he had but I had no problems installing Mandrake Linux 9.1.

I used ATTO bench to see if the Trios II had any impact on hard drive performance. I ran 3 straight tests with the drive connected to the Trios II and 3 with the drive not connected to it. The 3 tests with the drive connected to the Trios II were in the same range as when not connected to it. The test was a 32kb read and write. The average scores were in the mid 35mb/sec read and mid 38mb/sec write.

Gripes

While the User Guide offers enough information to get most people started I would like to see more/better explanations of the various configuration options (at least on the web site). Obviously I would also like the Trios II to be mountable in a 5 1/4 inch drive bay like the original Trios (without that nasty aqua color). My last little complaint can be summed up in two words, ROUND CABLES!

Conclusion

The Trios II performs as advertised. Yes, I know it's more expensive than dual booting but IMHO, it's worth every penny. You can have up to 3 operating systems on one machine and those operating systems are shut off from each other. It's the solution I've been looking for and I will be recommending this product to those looking to put multiple OS's on one machine.  I like it so much that I'll be buying one for another computer.

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