January 5, 2002
This is the back of the
unit. On the right, there is one power in, one power out connector.
On the left, there are four IDE connectors. One goes to the motherboard,
the other three go to the hard disks. I would like to have seen then
add a plastic border around the pins so that it would be easier to attach
the IDE cable to Trios. As it is now, if you have the Trios installed
inside your case and are trying to attach the four IDE cables, it is very
easy to misalign the cables with the pins.
Now we get to the part where
their design puzzles me. In the picture, the top IDE port is for
hard disk 1, 2nd port for hard disk 2, 3rd port for hard disk 3, and the
bottom port is for the motherboard IDE connector. This means that
in the typical setup where the hard disks are below the Trios unit, the
cables will have to cross each other. Considering how close the IDE
ports are packed together, this is gonna be one ugly mess.
Click image to enlarge
Again, based on how they
have their IDE ports laid out on the back of the Trios, the ideal cabling
situation is show in this picture. However, most people don't have
their hard disks above their 5.25 inch bay. They should reverse the
order of their IDE ports to accommodate more typical situations.
Click image to enlarge
Because of the aforementioned
cable problems, I had to perform a bit of cable folding to get all the
cables to reach their destination. Here I took one of their IDE cables
and folded it into a "W" and tied it down with zip ties. I love zip
ties. Half my computer is held together by zip ties. Just make
sure you don't put too much pressure at the end of the cables where they
attach to the plastic connector so you don't pull the wires out.
Click image to enlarge
Here you see the Trios installed
in my computer. (Yes I am reading Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings)
I have three hard disks in this machine, one disk is my workstation, one
is my gaming drive, and the third one is my Linux drive. The Trios
worked invisibly on all three platforms. There was no performance
decrease at all.
I am disappointed that I
lost one of my IDE port because the Trios requires the entire cable, but
then again, if I had those other hard drives in the machine without the
Trios, those IDE ports would have been lost anyways. Speaking of
losing things, using the Trios, you also lose a 5.25 inch bay. This
might not be important to you if you have a large case, but in cases like
mine, I now have a full house, with no more bays available for expansion.
I guess there is no way around this point.
 -
Click image to enlarge
Since each drive that the
Trios controls is fully independent from one another, you cannot access
the data on the other drives. It may be useful to add a "common share"
hard drive on a different IDE port away from the Trios that is accessible
from all three boot drives. This common share drive could hold downloads,
drivers, or any data that you need to access from any operating system
you choose to boot into. On this common share drive, you can also
make drive images using programs like Norton Ghost to backup your drives
before you install new programs. This is especially useful for a
Linux newbie like me where I often destroy system files and can easily
recover my system without reinstalling everything from scratch.
The Trios is not cheap.
It cost $79.95 directly from manufacturer. Due to it's price, it
may not be for everybody. However, buying a Trios is cheaper than
purchasing a new computer.
There are alternatives to
the Romtec Trios. For example, you could partition a hard disk into
several pieces and then use a boot manager to boot from whichever partition
you want. However, with this situation, it is possible for one operating
system to access and destroy the files on the other partitions. Also,
every time you load a new operating system, it may possibly overwrite your
boot manager leaving you with the big hassle of trying to recreate the
boot sector. Another problem with this scenario is that if your hard
drive fails or you catch a virus, all your partitions are affected, while
in the case of the Trios, only the active hard disk is affected.
Another alternative is to
use a removable hard disk tray to swap out hard disks. The problem
with this setup is that you don't really save any money since you'll need
to buy as many trays as you have hard disks. Also, I don't like the
idea of possibly subjecting your hard disk to damage every time you insert
it and pull it out.
You could also have all the
hard disks attached to your motherboard and use the Bios to select which
hard disk to boot from. However, this takes up all your IDE ports
and doesn't leave you room for your CD-ROM, CD-RW, etc. Besides,
going into the BIOS every time is a huge pain compared to pushing a button
on the outside of your case.
The last method would be
to leave your case open and when you want to switch hard disks or operating
systems, you would power down, reach inside to move the IDE cable to a
new hard disk, and then power up again.
Considering these alternatives,
the Romtec Trios looks very attractive.
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