Swapping drives in my notebook

[automatikdonn]

Hey guys,
Looking for some help from the techies here.. I've been given a new govt-issued laptop and it's quite nice. I'd like to run some of my personal software (video and sound editor, match pics, etc.) on it but don't want that intermingled with the other work stuff on here. Do they make devices that you can just swap between the work and personal hard drive easily, without having to remove screws and such? I'm not that tech savvy so the easier the better. Any links would be helpful.
Thanks!

Just remote desktop into your home machine.... problem solved for free. Be careful with doing stuff to the gov't laptop, as a I have one and they are monitored pretty tight, and if you mess with the hardware they will know. I know they will know because I am one of the people that would get it when you are done with it, or it breaks....

Remote desktop is included without the need for anything else, and cannot be monitored.....

[JDay]

Just remote desktop into your home machine.... problem solved for free.

Remote desktop is useless for many things, especially if you are not on a local network.

Be careful with doing stuff to the gov't laptop, as a I have one and they are monitored pretty tight, and if you mess with the hardware they will know.

Nonsense, they monitor what you do on their networks (to an extent) but for the most part the machine itself is not monitored.

I know they will know because I am one of the people that would get it when you are done with it, or it breaks....

So you're desktop support. Fixing an OS or replacing broken hardware is not the same as monitoring a user, in any case there would be no monitoring software on an OS that he installed on another drive.

Remote desktop is included without the need for anything else, and cannot be monitored.....

Want to make a bet?

[SuperSet]

Someone showed me Remote Desktop and it's not workable for any video editing. The eSATA drive thing is working out great as I can pack it on travel and keep my work/home stuff separate. I am concerned about the heat killing my drive though as this enclosure I bought gets really hot!

[JDay]

Someone showed me Remote Desktop and it's not workable for any video editing. The eSATA drive thing is working out great as I can pack it on travel and keep my work/home stuff separate. I am concerned about the heat killing my drive though as this enclosure I bought gets really hot!

How hot is "really hot"? Which enclosure did you buy?

[borongas]

lol..

Why not just dual boot the hard drive you already have in the laptop? If space is an issue just buy a bigger one and transfer the data..

http://lifehacker.com/5126781/how-to-dual-boot-windows-7-with-xp-or-vista

[SuperSet]

How hot is "really hot"? Which enclosure did you buy?

Very hot but I think it was due to my test video rendering, that does a lot of disk activity. It's NetDisk portable drive and I bought it from Fry's for about $25. It doesn't look like it has a fan.

[lanwarrior]

Just a side note: if possible, try not to do personal stuff on laptop issued by your employer, government included. They MAY monitor your stuff and may not like what you do. At my work, the monitoring software even timed HOW LONG you're going to specific sites like CNN, etc. If it goes certain threshold on a given day, IT Security will call you.

As it is, I have my work laptop but also brought a MacBook Air, connecting to a CLEAR 4G device to separate the network connection.

[SuperSet]

Understood. I called a post-.GOV buddy who happens to be an IT guru and he said basically the same thing you just said. There's a host of programs that load up even before I sign in that monitors everything I type or see. So, he said the external hard drive thing will be fine since it's basically a completely different machine.

[lanwarrior]

In term of the external HDD getting hot, I assume it's either the enclosure or there's way too many HDD activity. So you can do 2 things:

1). Replace it with something else. Check out this Amazon link, many enclosure have tons of 4 stars review. Click here

2). Switch to SSD. Since there is no moving parts, it'll be much cooler to run. However, SSD is pretty expensive (for now at least). The additional benefit is that SSD is VERY FAST, much faster than even a 7200 rpm HDD.

I still like my solution though: bring a Macbook Air. The laptop is very thin and light. I travel 50% of the time and carry 2 laptops (work and the Air) and feels just like carrying one laptop.

[Ricky-Ray]

Get another laptop hard drive and get the harddrive caddy from the manufacturer of the laptop. Most of the time it's just 2 screws holding the hard drive securely to the laptop. Remove the 2 screws and then you can swap hard drives as you please. One hard drive for work and the other for personal. 1 laptop, 2 different computers. No need to carry an external hdd, or another laptop.

I find carry an extra laptop hard drive is going to take up alot less space in my laptop bag than an external hdd.