Are S-ATA hard discs hot pluggable when motherboard is powered on?

[Jason Stacy]

My motherboard A8N offers 2 S-ATA slots and some more IDE slots.

Assume a first hard disc (with my OS) is already running and the (Asus A8N) motherboard powered on:
Can I hot plug (in or out) a second S-ATA hard disc without the risk of damages for the motherboard or
the S-ATA hard disc?

J.

 

[JS]

Some motherboard manuals specifically
mention hot pluggable SATA drives (especially
if they are configured as RAID). Other motherboards
make no mention of if they can or cannot in which
case you may want to check the manufacture's
motherboard forum if they have one.

 

[DL]

If you use an internal hot swap caddy, yes

 

[Anna]

My motherboard A8N offers 2 S-ATA slots and some more IDE slots.

Assume a first hard disc (with my OS) is already running and the (Asus
A8N) motherboard powered on:
Can I hot plug (in or out) a second S-ATA hard disc without the risk of
damages for the motherboard or
the S-ATA hard disc?

J.

Jason:
I assume you're referring to the ASUS A8N-E board, yes?

AFAIK, that board supports hot-plugging SATA HDDs so you should have no
problem in that regard. I assume you'll be working with a SATA-II (3GB/s
data interface) HDD. Have you raised this issue because you've run into some
problem here?
Anna

 

[Richard in AZ]

| My motherboard A8N offers 2 S-ATA slots and some more IDE slots.
|
| Assume a first hard disc (with my OS) is already running and the (Asus A8N) motherboard powered
on:
| Can I hot plug (in or out) a second S-ATA hard disc without the risk of damages for the
motherboard or
| the S-ATA hard disc?
|
| J.

NO. You might get away with it, but it is absolutely foolish to do any work on components inside
the computer with power connected, much less with the computer operating.

 

[Arno]

My motherboard A8N offers 2 S-ATA slots and some more IDE slots.

Assume a first hard disc (with my OS) is already running and the
(Asus A8N) motherboard powered on:

Can I hot plug (in or out) a second S-ATA hard disc without the risk
of damages for the motherboard or
the S-ATA hard disc?

Yes. SATA is electrically full hotpluggible. You absolutely
must use the disk power connector though. If you, for example,
have the disk powered via a Y-cable, unplugging the Y-cable
from the PSU has a good chance of (literally) blowing the
disks electronics up and may damage the mainboard.

Pulling the power and data connectors directly from the
disk is no electrical risk at all.

One second caveat: Spinnig disks can only take little
mechanical shock, so be careful. Pulling the connectors
from a disk screwed in is nt an issue. Just give it a
minute to stop spinning before doing more work on it.

Arno

 

[Rod Speed]

My motherboard A8N offers 2 S-ATA slots and some more IDE slots.

Assume a first hard disc (with my OS) is already running and the
(Asus A8N) motherboard powered on: Can I hot plug (in or out) a
second S-ATA hard disc without the risk of damages for the
motherboard or the S-ATA hard disc?

Depends on the OS. You dont get a safely remove icon, so you cant
flush the data to the drive before you remove it with the more basic OSs.

 

[Andrew E.]

Usually only "server" boards allow for that,the availability is determined by
the MB controller for SATA,& usually the server board is running several hd
at a time in RAID.

 

[M.I.5¾]

| My motherboard A8N offers 2 S-ATA slots and some more IDE slots.
|
| Assume a first hard disc (with my OS) is already running and the (Asus
A8N) motherboard powered
on:
| Can I hot plug (in or out) a second S-ATA hard disc without the risk of
damages for the
motherboard or
| the S-ATA hard disc?
|
| J.

NO. You might get away with it, but it is absolutely foolish to do any
work on components inside
the computer with power connected, much less with the computer operating.

Not correct. The SATA interface has been deliberately designed to be hot
pluggable and indeed it is. This applies to both the data and the power
connector.

 

[Bob Harris]

Yes and No.

Hardware issues/features aside, Windows XP does not really support
hot-swapping as easily as it does USB.

I have found it necessary to first "disable" my external SATA drive in the
XP device manager, then I can safely disconnect it, or simply power it off.

This is a little more tedious than USB and firewire devices.

Additionally, I would be reluctant to unplug anything attached to a normal
motherboard, while the power is on.

 

[Roger]

My motherboard A8N offers 2 S-ATA slots and some more IDE slots.

Assume a first hard disc (with my OS) is already running and the (Asus A8N) motherboard powered on:
Can I hot plug (in or out) a second S-ATA hard disc without the risk of damages for the motherboard or
the S-ATA hard disc?

J.

For that purpose it is better to use an external SATA/USB enclosure.

 

[Rick]

| My motherboard A8N offers 2 S-ATA slots and some more IDE slots.
|
| Assume a first hard disc (with my OS) is already running and the (Asus A8N) motherboard powered
on:
| Can I hot plug (in or out) a second S-ATA hard disc without the risk of damages for the
motherboard or
| the S-ATA hard disc?
|
| J.

NO. You might get away with it, but it is absolutely foolish to do any work on components inside
the computer with power connected, much less with the computer operating.

Generalizations are always dangerous Richard SATA drives maybe hot
swapped if certain conditions are met with the hardware. I would never
do it unless you know that you have your computer set up properly i.e
hotwsap caddy as mentioned above.

--

Rick
Fargo, ND
N 46°53'251"
W 096°48'279"

Remember the USS Liberty
http://www.ussliberty.org/

 

[GeV]

My motherboard A8N offers 2 S-ATA slots and some more IDE slots.

Generalizations are always dangerous Richard SATA drives maybe hot swapped if certain conditions are met with the hardware. I
would never do it unless you know that you have your computer set up properly i.e hotwsap caddy as mentioned above.

What about if the power was turned off first? One could put an inline switch on the 12 volt (Yellow) DC wire going to the hard
drive or power the drive with power from and external case. (Use a Sata to IDE power adapter of course to make it easier.) Once
the power was off surely it could be swapped out or swapped in. I was able to unplug IDE drives this way years ago but I couldn't
get the system to detect them when plugging them in. They were just invisible. Never lost any data.

 

[M.I.5¾]

Generalizations are always dangerous Richard SATA drives maybe hot swapped
if certain conditions are met with the hardware. I would never do it
unless you know that you have your computer set up properly i.e hotwsap
caddy as mentioned above.

Not necessary. The SATA connector is unconditionally hot pluggable.

 

[M.I.5¾]

Yes and No.

Hardware issues/features aside, Windows XP does not really support
hot-swapping as easily as it does USB.

I have found it necessary to first "disable" my external SATA drive in the
XP device manager, then I can safely disconnect it, or simply power it
off.

This is a little more tedious than USB and firewire devices.

Additionally, I would be reluctant to unplug anything attached to a normal
motherboard, while the power is on.

Systems seem to vary on this point, but one of my desktops detects when a
SATA disc drive is hot plugged and it shortly appears in 'My Computer' and
is accessible. The other will never see the drive unless it is booted with
it connected. I gather that the latter is the more usual behaviour.

For what it is worth, a USB to SATA adaptor that I have always works when a
SATA drive is hot plugged to it regardless of the system it is connected to.

 

[lurker-2]

My motherboard A8N offers 2 S-ATA slots and some more IDE slots.

Assume a first hard disc (with my OS) is already running and the (Asus A8N) motherboard powered on:
Can I hot plug (in or out) a second S-ATA hard disc without the risk of damages for the motherboard or
the S-ATA hard disc?

J.

Both of my current systems work that way.
It seems older boards are dependent on the BIOS support.

I also have found that IDE drives with certain IDE=>SATA adapters also
work that way.