Is it possible to make removeable hard drives hot swap?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Not so quick
  • Start date Start date
Not so quick said:
They are IDE.

Thanks : -)
Click to expand...

Go SCSI young man. Go SCSI and never look back. I'm always amazed to see
how many people want to get an IDE to do what a SCSI drive is designed to
do. Do fool around with cheap wanna-be drive solutions when you know the
only answer is SCSI. Accept no substitutes.

Rita
 
You need a caddy with a power switch on it.

Under WinXP, just uninstall the drive in DeviceManager before you power it
off and remove it. To install, insert the caddy and power up, then do a
"Scan for hardware changes" in DeviceManager by right clicking on the name
of your PC.
 
Maybe I should explain my problem and
see if there is a better solution than hot
swapping. I capture video in about 10G
files. The are converted from avi to mpeg
on a different computer than they are
captured on. I guess 1Gig NICs would be
way to slow.
Click to expand...

Why would gigabit NICs be "way to slow"? With gigabit the bottlenecks
are the disk interface and the PCI bus, not the NIC.
 
Rod Speed said:
Yes. Not for the OS boot drive tho.


Nope. Its also supported by some hardware RAID as well.
Click to expand...

In the device manager there is no 'settings' tab for
any of my hard drives in XP. ME yes.
 
In the device manager there is no 'settings'
tab for any of my hard drives in XP. ME yes.
Click to expand...

Its done differently in XP.

Its done using Computer Management. You get there from the Control Panel,
Performance and Management, Admin Tools, Computer Management.
Click on Removable storage and then select the Help in the Action menu.
 
Rod Speed said:
Its done differently in XP.

Its done using Computer Management. You get there from the Control Panel,
Performance and Management, Admin Tools, Computer Management.
Click on Removable storage and then select the Help in the Action menu.
Click to expand...

Thanks. You can also reach Computer management
by right clicking on "My Computer" and clicking
manage. It's after you get to the 'removable storage'
menu that I get lost. Thanks for trying. If you have
any ideas about libraries, etc. let me know. : -)
 
Folkert Rienstra said:
Depends on what you consider hotswap.
IDE drives themselfs have no support for it, firmware wise.
Click to expand...

Some racks claim that theirs are
hot swappable, though... for
IDE hard disks.
 
Thanks. You can also reach Computer management
by right clicking on "My Computer" and clicking
manage. It's after you get to the 'removable storage'
menu that I get lost. Thanks for trying. If you have
any ideas about libraries, etc. let me know. : -)
Click to expand...

You can also do it the manual way like
John says if you want a simpler approach.
 
Rod Speed said:
They're right. Its just not part of the standard with IDE, only with SATA.
Click to expand...

I've got SATA connectors. If I put in an
adaptor will the IDE bays, running off of
SATA be better for hot swapping?
 
Not so quick said:
They are IDE.

Thanks : -)
Click to expand...

Maybe I should explain my problem and
see if there is a better solution than hot
swapping. I capture video in about 10G
files. The are converted from avi to mpeg
on a different computer than they are
captured on. I guess 1Gig NICs would be
way to slow.
Thanks : -)
 
I've got SATA connectors.
Click to expand...

You need more than just SATA connectors for SATA hotswap.
You basically need the drive mounting hardware and rails etc
as well. They're not currently very common at all.
If I put in an adaptor will the IDE bays, running
off of SATA be better for hot swapping?
Click to expand...

The problem is finding the hardware that allows SATA hotswap currently.

It is a better approach if you can tho.
 
Not so quick said:
Maybe I should explain my problem and see
if there is a better solution than hot swapping.
Click to expand...

Not a bad idea.
I capture video in about 10G files. The are converted
from avi to mpeg on a different computer than they are
captured on. I guess 1Gig NICs would be way to slow.
Click to expand...

It would be noticeably slower but mechanically
much more convenient because you wouldnt
have to do anything mechanically.

Only you can really say how much the pause
between video capture sessions matters.

You could also do the hotswap using an external firewire
drive. That would be much more viable than with an IDE drive.
And mechanically more convenient than with an SATA drive,
you'd just plug the external drive between the two PCs.
And thats got rather more convenient OS level support too.

You could probably have a pair of external firewire drives
and a crossover switch which swaps the drives between
the PC for an instant switch of the drives between PCs
too. That would certainly be much faster than 1Gb lan.
 
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