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Thread ID: 135965 2014-01-04 04:56:00 Hot swapping HD's SP8's (9836) Press F1
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1364222 2014-01-04 04:56:00 Hi All

I've just been trying to read up on what I believe is called "hot swapping", however, I'm not sure whether this is correct or not ... most of the stuff I read was way over my pay grade !

OK .. I have a computer with Asus MB - 1TB HD SATA with Win7 64 OS. I also have a secondary HD (IDE) with XP and can choose which one I want to use after boot up. Obviously if I choose Win7, that drive is designated C: and the other becomes E: and vice versa.

The question I would like the answer to is:- At boot up if I choose Win7 as OS C: and have XP E: as a slave, am I able to remove E: drive safely and put another HD in it's place as a slave without stuffing anything up and without having to power everything down ??

Hope that makes sense to someone :confused:
SP8's (9836)
1364223 2014-01-04 06:10:00 You can't hot swap IDE drives. For hot swapping SATA drives you need to have AHCI (advanced host controller interface for SATA drives) enabled in the BIOS. Terry Porritt (14)
1364224 2014-01-04 06:54:00 Thanks Terry ... I thought that was the case, but the confirmation is very much appreciated. SP8's (9836)
1364225 2014-01-04 21:27:00 Also, bad things happen if you try and hot swap a HDD the OS is running on if its not using RAID.

Hot swapping is nice, but very rarely feasible in a home or small office environment :-)
Chilling_Silence (9)
1364226 2014-01-04 23:28:00 Where I find hot swapping handy is when backing up, or plugging in another drive without having to power down. I have 2 caddies and an e-sata docking station.
(I get the impression e-sata may be falling out of fashion in favour of USB3 these days. )
Terry Porritt (14)
1364227 2014-01-06 07:56:00 The closest I feel safe with in regard to a 'hot swap' is to use a proper external drive via USB. Slower, but safer by far.

Probably won't work with regard to swapping in/out a boot drive.

All drives on an internal interface don't get touched until the 'puter has been shut down entirely.

With PATA drives I used to get cheap 5.25" enclosures from Dick Smith and place a couple of receptacles for them in the CD/DVD bays. Still needed a power-down before removing / replacing any of them, plus some further time wasted in the BIOS on occasion at startup.
Paul.Cov (425)
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