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| Thread ID: 33483 | 2003-05-17 09:00:00 | Hot removing IDE Hard drive | Mike (15) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 145078 | 2003-05-17 09:00:00 | Is it possible to Hot-remove an IDE hard disk drive? I know Win XP can handle it, but can the harddrive? Anybody know? Mike. |
Mike (15) | ||
| 145079 | 2003-05-17 09:03:00 | i'm not 100% sure but yes they can but you need to have an ide controller that can handle it. not sure about onboard ide but ide raid cards are often hotswapable. | tweak'e (174) | ||
| 145080 | 2003-05-17 09:06:00 | Without specialist hardware no, appropriate controller, and usually some sort of caddy or swap-out system... You can probably get away with it for some time, but who's to say when your luck will run out... That said, I've hot-swapped a BIOS so that was pretty risky... |
whiskeytangofoxtrot (438) | ||
| 145081 | 2003-05-17 09:08:00 | I have so-called "hot swappable" cradles with hard drives, running under XP. The info provided says that because the act of unlocking the drive switches off the power to the drive it will enable hot swapping. Sad to say, It doesnt work. (This was tried with a secondary drive, as it would be unlikely to survive the primary system drive being kidnapped) Any attempt to hot swap (with power removed) severely damaged the Windows OS. To its credit, XP just sulks, then complains bitterly and replaces all the damaged files, and resumes normal service after a minute or so. |
godfather (25) | ||
| 145082 | 2003-05-17 09:14:00 | Thanks for the comment GF... XP has a setting that lets you turn off a removable drive and tells you when its safe to remove it. However with my drive (as it's not removable by default) has these options greyed out. I was hoping someone could tell me how to turn these options on so that I could turn off the harddrive before I yanked it out :) I guess not :( Mike. |
Mike (15) | ||
| 145083 | 2003-05-17 09:22:00 | I know that SATA is hot swappable. I'd imagine you can get away with it with a standard set up if you wanted though. Just not what you're *meant* to do. | -=JM=- (16) | ||
| 145084 | 2003-05-17 09:25:00 | I had a feeling it was under Device Manager, but it's not. Try searching Windows Help & Support. |
agent (30) | ||
| 145085 | 2003-05-17 21:29:00 | "Sad to say, It doesnt work. (This was tried with a secondary drive, as it would be unlikely to survive the primary system drive being kidnapped)" Hi GF I'm interested in your comments as I was seriously looking at the IDE raid system offered by Digicom at ICE. Their system is supposedly os independent, and (I double checked) is they say hot swappable. You have two drives in the "caddy" and simply pull one out when you want to - they are both seen as drive C to the OS. I'm looking one of these for work, but is this the same scenario as you have? |
falvrez (390) | ||
| 145086 | 2003-05-17 21:54:00 | RAID would be different, and *should* work. Mine are primary and secondary on IDE. I simply rotate the secondary (backup HDD) with others and keep a secure copy in a fireproof safe. You would need the correct implementation of RAID to allow what you want, maybe RAID 5? |
godfather (25) | ||
| 145087 | 2003-05-18 02:54:00 | It is one of those ... One problem can be when disk directories and writes cached in memory. If the disk is removed before the cache is writen back, it might not correspond with what's on the disk. Disaster City. :_| The electrical side: I don't think there's any way to tristate the drivers to "safely" remove the plug. In mainframes, where all hardware was hot removable, they used open-collector drivers, and there is no problem. Floppy drives, and MFM (and SCSI) have open-collector. If there's been nothing written to the disk for a while, and you are careful, you'll probably get away with it. But you run the risk of confusing the OS. In *nix, you can "sync", and "umount" the drive. |
Graham L (2) | ||
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