hot swaping drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim Burton
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Jim Burton

My motherboard has SATA connections
I have a number of old IDE disks and a PATA removable caddy

I would like to know if I purchased a SATA to IDE adapter to connect a SATA
port on the motherboard to the caddy could I then safely hot swap IDE disks
in the caddy ?

Regards & TIA
 
Jim Burton said:
My motherboard has SATA connections
I have a number of old IDE disks and a PATA removable caddy

I would like to know if I purchased a SATA to IDE adapter to connect a
SATA
port on the motherboard to the caddy could I then safely hot swap IDE
disks
in the caddy ?
Click to expand...

What OS are you running? Window XP doesn't support hotswapping PATA drives
at all.
 
Oh Dear ... XP Pro .... so that's the end of that idea
Click to expand...


Not necessarily, you can swap drives hooked up to some
discrete controllers, but it is because the separate
controller is designed to accomodate it. In such cases the
drive needs to be unplugged from the bus before power, and
*new* drive plugged into power before bus... the idea being
you dont' want an (electrically) dead device on the bus.

As for whether an PATA adapter would allow it, may depend
largely on whether you could've done same with an SATA
drive, though there are no guarantees.
 
Jim Burton said:
My motherboard has SATA connections
I have a number of old IDE disks and a PATA removable caddy

I would like to know if I purchased a SATA to IDE adapter to connect a SATA
port on the motherboard to the caddy could I then safely hot swap IDE disks
in the caddy ?
Click to expand...


If you want "hot swap" get a USB2 external enclosure
 
My motherboard has SATA connections
I have a number of old IDE disks and a PATA removable caddy

I would like to know if I purchased a SATA to IDE adapter to connect a SATA
port on the motherboard to the caddy could I then safely hot swap IDE disks
in the caddy ?

Regards & TIA
Click to expand...

There is such thing as a hot swap caddy for IDE drives.You can even
get away with pulling out the ribbon cable and power cable while the
computer is live. But it's not really a great idea.

You can probably do it with USB.
 
There is such thing as a hot swap caddy for IDE drives.You can even
get away with pulling out the ribbon cable and power cable while the
computer is live. But it's not really a great idea.
Click to expand...

But XP does NOT support hotswapping IDE drives. Windows 98 does though.

There is no option on an IDE hard drive to disable write caching, etc. so
you can never be sure if Windows still has something to put onto the drive.
 
Is it just a question of flushing the write cache that will make it unsafe
..... or is there an electrical problem with spikes etc when switching off
the power to a drive in the caddy ?
 
Is it just a question of flushing the write cache that will make it unsafe
.... or is there an electrical problem with spikes etc when switching off
the power to a drive in the ca

Both.
Click to expand...
 
There is such thing as a hot swap caddy for IDE drives.You can even
get away with pulling out the ribbon cable and power cable while the
computer is live. But it's not really a great idea.

You can probably do it with USB.
Click to expand...

OK - Do you know if there are any internal PATA HDD caddies available ?
 
Noozer said:
But XP does NOT support hotswapping IDE drives. Windows 98 does though.

There is no option on an IDE hard drive to disable write caching, etc. so
you can never be sure if Windows still has something to put onto the
drive.
Click to expand...

In Device Manager/ Disk drives/Properties there is an option to disable
Write Caching !!!
 
But XP does NOT support hotswapping IDE drives. Windows 98 does though.
In Device Manager/ Disk drives/Properties there is an option to disable
Write Caching !!!
Click to expand...

You mean the performance options, that are greyed out?
 
Is it just a question of flushing the write cache that will make it unsafe
.... or is there an electrical problem with spikes etc when switching off
the power to a drive in the caddy ?
Click to expand...

The cache issue is significant but it can be done with IDE
on (SCSI-like) discrete controllers as you'd find on PCI
cards.

Removing or plugging in a drive can cause power
fluctuations, but this is more of a reason to have a decent
power supply than not to do it... even turning on an system
or having a drive wake up from being asleep will cause a
power fluctuation.
 
kony said:
The cache issue is significant but it can be done with IDE
on (SCSI-like) discrete controllers as you'd find on PCI
cards.

Removing or plugging in a drive can cause power
fluctuations, but this is more of a reason to have a decent
power supply than not to do it... even turning on an system
or having a drive wake up from being asleep will cause a
power fluctuation.
Click to expand...

I have a new Zalman Power ATX12v ver 2.2 Noisless Switching Power Supply
.....
Not sure how this rates in the decency stakes
Is it good enough ?
and I were to disable write caching ... do you think it would be safe ?
 
No ... in the individual Disk Drive properties under the policy tab
Click to expand...

My mistake... That's where I meant. All greyed out here. I can't change it.

You do know that driver letters, and file caches won't be refreshed when you
swap an IDE drive, right?

Take a drive out that has one partition, insert a drive with two partitions,
Windows won't see the new letter and will assume that the file allocation
table it has from the first drive is still valid.
 
DaveW said:
IDE disks are NOT hot-swappable.
Click to expand...

Actually, they are if the right hardware is present AND the OS supports it.

The PATA drive bays I have here are certified for hot swapping normal IDE
drives in Windows 98, since 98 would support it.

The tray has a lock preventing inserting/removing the drive while still
powered on. Open the lock and the drive is powered down. Pull the drive,
insert a new one and close the lock and the new drive is powered up.

The problem with this under XP is that it doesn't expect the drive to
change, so it won't do anything when the new drive is installed. It still
tries to access the old files using the file allocation table from the old
drive. It's not smart enough to refresh it's view of the drive.
 
I have a new Zalman Power ATX12v ver 2.2 Noisless Switching Power Supply
....
Not sure how this rates in the decency stakes
Is it good enough ?
and I were to disable write caching ... do you think it would be safe ?
Click to expand...


.... you don't mention the capacity or what it's powering so
we'd have some basis for assumign a decent transient
response, but in general it is a decent brand of PSU.

As for whether it's safe, I would be more comfortable having
you try it and see with worthless data instead of finding
out later there was a problem. It's "supposed" to be
supported by some controllers but a lot of things are
"supposed" to work right but too few people do it and there
isn't enough data about what kinds of problems may arise in
certain configurations.
 
Noozer said:
Actually, they are if the right hardware is present AND the OS supports
it.

The PATA drive bays I have here are certified for hot swapping normal IDE
drives in Windows 98, since 98 would support it.

The tray has a lock preventing inserting/removing the drive while still
powered on. Open the lock and the drive is powered down. Pull the drive,
insert a new one and close the lock and the new drive is powered up.

The problem with this under XP is that it doesn't expect the drive to
change, so it won't do anything when the new drive is installed. It still
tries to access the old files using the file allocation table from the old
drive. It's not smart enough to refresh it's view of the drive.
Click to expand...

Does this mean that if a USB connected drive was hot swapped the FAT
wouldn't be refreshed or does XP realise that USB drives are 'Removable'
 
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