AHCI Required for External Hot Swap?

[DarkRogue]

Hello,

With the price of WD's 640GB drives falling again, I'm really tempted to get one. I'm currently using 3x5000AAKS drives and they're fine, but new drives are just so cheap now.. I wouldn't mind having one more.

That said, my P182 is almost filled to the brim with hard drives as it is, so I want to look at external options. I currently have a 1-drive IDE external enclosure I'm going to sell shortly, but it's quite difficult to get at. I'll post later for enclosure recommendations after doing a bit of research on it, but my main concern right now is hot swapping.

I'd prefer my new one to have 2 bays and support hot swapping. Internal SATA drives also support hot swapping, but require AHCI to be installed/enabled. I do not have this currently.. All my SATA drives are running in IDE mode, and sites seem to recommend against switching over to AHCI mode once I've set up on IDE.

Without having AHCI enabled, will this affect the ability of any external enclosures (and associated SATA drives) and their hot swapping? Will I flat out not be able to hot swap them at all?

Thanks in advance.

 

[ViRGE]

You will need to use AHCI mode if you want to hotswap.

 

[DarkRogue]

Thanks for the reply. I was afraid of that..

How exactly does this work though, I found some oddities while Googling.
My motherboard has 2 SATA/RAID controllers - 6 ports are powered by the ICH9R (where ALL my current drives are hooked up to) and is running IDE mode. The other two ports are powered by the Gigabyte SATA controller.. I believe people said it was a JMicron chip, and this would be where I would plug in the eSata bracket that came with the motherboard, and where the external enclosure+drives will be hooked up to. If it's a separate chip, do I still need to change my entire system to AHCI (including the ICH9R), or do I only need to enable AHCI on the Gigabyte/JMicron controller?

 

[ViRGE]

Someone else will have to answer that question, I don't know enough about the specifics of your setup.

 

[Dahak]

If you are going to only have the external drives hooked up to the 2nd chip that you want to have hot swap, then you will only need to turn it on for that chip and can leave the ich9r as ide

 

[DarkRogue]

Ah - exactly what I needed to know.
Thanks!

So this means that each SATA controller is capable of independently switching between AHCI or IDE mode, but the individual SATA ports connected to each controller can't?

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: DarkRogue
Internal SATA drives also support hot swapping, but require AHCI to be installed/enabled. I do not have this currently.. All my SATA drives are running in IDE mode, and sites seem to recommend against switching over to AHCI mode once I've set up on IDE.

Not true. I have numerous Server clients who hotswap internal (and external) SATA drives and don't use AHCI. All I use are Silicon Image-based (mostly 3112 and 3132 chipset) PCI and PCI-E SATA controller boards (costing $10 to $50) and standard (not eSATA) SATA cables. We hot-swap out the drives once a week without even logging onto the (running) server (mostly Windows Server 2003, but I also use the same system on my personal XP Professional desktop). We just yank the drive out.

The one disadvantage of the Silicon Image chips controller cards I mentioned are that there's no "Safely Remove Hardware" option given. The computer thinks the drives are internal (non-removable) SCSI hard drives. You don't want to pull out the drive while it's still writing or might be writing some remaining cached data. We make backups overnight and there's a Verify operation after the backup is done, so it's pretty safe to remove the dives in the morning. The backups are also tested once a month to insure their integrity.

 

[DarkRogue]

Really.. that's quite interesting.. Is that only for Silicon Image chips?

I assume best bet would be for me to get an external enclosure that supports hot swap and try it without switching to AHCI, although with a JMicron chip, it may be different.

 

[Paperdoc]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: DarkRogue
The one disadvantage of the Silicon Image chips controller cards I mentioned are that there's no "Safely Remove Hardware" option given. The computer thinks the drives are internal (non-removable) SCSI hard drives. You don't want to pull out the drive will it's still writing or might be writing some remaining cached data. We make backups overnight and there's a Verify operation after the backup is done, so it's pretty safe to remove the dives in the morning. The backups are also tested once a month to insure their integrity.

Very interesting. I have an external drive connected via eSATA to an ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe mobo which uses a Silicon Image controller for that port. I have been confused by all the posts in fora saying that you can NOT use Hot Swapping unless the system gives you the "Safely Remove Hardware" box, whereas the mobo manual makes it clear the eSATA port is fully compliant with all specs for that port. And Hot Swapping is specifically a required part of eSATA.

So, you have solved the puzzle in telling us that, although Silicon Image does this all correctly, it hides it from the OS by making the drive appear to be a SCSI device. That explains the lack of a "Safely Remove ..." box.

 

[Old Hippie]

So, you have solved the puzzle in telling us that, although Silicon Image does this all correctly, it hides it from the OS by making the drive appear to be a SCSI device. That explains the lack of a "Safely Remove ..." box.

Using a little program called HotSwap fixes that.

 

[mooseracing]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

The one disadvantage of the Silicon Image chips controller cards I mentioned are that there's no "Safely Remove Hardware" option given.

Use HotSwap!.exe. It fixes this problem and adds them to the hotswap list. I use the program at least weekly as I have backups at work on e-sata devices and take them home that way.

 

[Old Hippie]

The JMicron chip in my IP35-Pro is used to control the IDE and eSATA ports.

I have switched back and forth from IDE and AHCI on the other controllers, but always left the JMicron chip in IDE mode and the eSATA hot swap works fine.....most of the time.

Sometimes it just doesn't wanna let go of the external.

Seems not all MB makers integrate this chip the same way.

The little HotSwap program I linked, may help.

 

[DarkRogue]

That little program sounds very handy to have - thanks for the link!

So in that case, should I try hot swapping without changing the JMicron chip to AHCI mode, or should I do it just to be safe?
(I'm not sure how to set it in BIOS either, Gigabyte lists them so ambiguously, I don't know which is which.)

I suppose the next step now is to start searching for a good, tool-less, 2bay esata enclosure lol.

 

[Old Hippie]

So in that case, should I try hot swapping without changing the JMicron chip to AHCI mode,

I would, it's no big deal.

Get the system running and plug in the external drive.

If it's recognized, you're probably good to go.

If it's not, come back and we'll work on plan "B".

 

[DarkRogue]

All right, I'll give that a go.

I still need an enclosure before I can try for "plan B" though, lol.