What do you think of that

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joe
  • Start date Start date
J

Joe

My boss is connecting/disconnecting secondary hard drives (power and
ATA cable) without shutting down the computer. Yeah it worked, but...
how bad it is for the drive?
 
My boss is connecting/disconnecting secondary hard drives (power and
ATA cable) without shutting down the computer. Yeah it worked, but...
how bad it is for the drive?
Click to expand...

Potentially terminal for the drives and/or the motherboard. Stupid in
the extreme.
 
Joe said:
My boss is connecting/disconnecting secondary hard drives (power and
ATA cable) without shutting down the computer. Yeah it worked, but...
how bad it is for the drive?
Click to expand...


The power connectors are not designed for hot plugging - sometimes the PSU
will just shut off if you start hot-plugging devices like that. If he is
pulling the ATA cable without power (to the drive) then he is unlikely to
damage the motherboard or hard drive. It does however beg the question:
"What's the point?" as you'll need to reboot the machine in order to access
the drives anyway.

Not worth the risk in my opinion, the connectors, devices, drivers and OS
are all not designed to be hot-plugged with normal ATA... bring on SATA.

Ben
 
What others have stated plus --
The cables are NOT meant to be removed/inserted too many times. Eventually the power and
IDE cables will fail.

Dave



| My boss is connecting/disconnecting secondary hard drives (power and
| ATA cable) without shutting down the computer. Yeah it worked, but...
| how bad it is for the drive?
 
Joe said:
My boss is connecting/disconnecting secondary hard drives (power and
ATA cable) without shutting down the computer. Yeah it worked, but...
how bad it is for the drive?
Click to expand...

Your boss is not very bright. IDE devices are not to be hot-swapped.
 
"What's the point?" as you'll need to reboot the machine in order to access
the drives anyway.
Click to expand...

Thank you all, I pasted your answer to him, hopefully he'll stop doing
that with CUSTOMER'S drives.

With XP you don't have to reboot to access the drive.
 
S.Heenan said:
Your boss is not very bright. IDE devices are not to be hot-swapped.
Click to expand...
Something else to be considered here is the fact that your boss is always
right, no matter how stupid he is.
 
Canus_Lupus said:
Something else to be considered here is the fact that your boss is always
right, no matter how stupid he is.
Click to expand...

Depends if your boss likes "yes men". Successful bosses should be open to
the opinion of their staff.

Ben
 
Depends if your boss likes "yes men". Successful bosses should be open to
the opinion of their staff.
Click to expand...

He's open, I hope :) Maybe I would have removed the word "stupid" and
"not bright" from all your answers, but... he deserves it :)
 
Le Sat said:
My boss is connecting/disconnecting secondary hard drives (power and
ATA cable) without shutting down the computer. Yeah it worked, but...
how bad it is for the drive?
Click to expand...

I talked back to my boss after pasting him your replys, how
interesting... you're all morons, you're no one to tell what is good
or bad for a computer (only him can?)... He say IDE is "open
connector" and nothing can happens.

I told him, ask Maxtor, but he have no time to lose with that...
 
I talked back to my boss after pasting him your replys, how
interesting... you're all morons, you're no one to tell what is good
or bad for a computer (only him can?)... He say IDE is "open
connector" and nothing can happens.
Click to expand...

LOL! On server machines you often have SCSI drives that are hot
swappable, but standard IDE drives certainly are not. It is only a
matter of time before he does major damage to a machine. I have killed
a hard disk just by swapping drive cables over while the machine was
shutdown but still had the power connected, I learned my lesson. I
wouldn't even think of doing it while the machine is running.
 
LOL! On server machines you often have SCSI drives that are hot
swappable, but standard IDE drives certainly are not. It is only a
matter of time before he does major damage to a machine. I have killed
a hard disk just by swapping drive cables over while the machine was
shutdown but still had the power connected, I learned my lesson. I
wouldn't even think of doing it while the machine is running.
Click to expand...

Sorry for my english but I want to reply

He do this on our workshop computer. Plugging customers's HD for virus
scanning, etc... You plug it, refresh device manager in XP and the
drive is accessible.

He already know the damage, I told him of the nic card bad, the sound
card bad, the cdrw bad we changed over the time, the cpu now have a
lvl1 and lvl2 cache errors in Hot CPU Tester and now HE buy WD drives
because Maxtor broke too often, etc... He have all the clues and
answers under the eyes... But WE are all dumbs.
 
He do this on our workshop computer. Plugging customers's HD for virus
scanning, etc... You plug it, refresh device manager in XP and the
drive is accessible.
Click to expand...

I don't know where you work, but maybe your boss wants to break your
customers PC's so he can make a profit on putting in new hard disks
and motherboards.
 
I don't know where you work, but maybe your boss wants to break your
customers PC's so he can make a profit on putting in new hard disks
and motherboards.
Click to expand...

Most probably, but I don't care anymore, I'm fired. :) Good thing.
 
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