Are SATA hard drives hot-swappable?

[Senbonzakura]

Don't mind my noobish question. But I asume they are swappable right? I can just take out my old hard drive from one of my computers and retain all the files and stuff onto a newer computer? This is just a storage drive, not a boot drive. Thank you.

 

[Aluvus]

You can take one from one computer to another, yes.

However, "hot-swappable" specifically means that you could perform that operation with the computers running. SATA officially supports this, though I'm told some implementations are... shall we say... less than perfect.

 

[Lord Evermore]

I think you're mixing up two questions.

Hot-swappable means you can remove the drive without shutting down the computer. Technically SATA drives are hot-swappable, but the drivers, controller and OS have to support it (if they don't, results could vary, system lockup, crash and reboot, things like that).

If you mean can you use one hard drive in another computer, yes, there's nothing to stop you from doing that, unless you did something like encrypting the drive which is unlikely.

 

[Rubycon]

Mine are but the dock specifically says the os and controller must support it. In the device manager the drives are listed as removable like a USB device. Removing the disk that has the OS running on it via using the key and lever is the quickest way to turn off the computer outside of yanking the plug!

 

[imported_Tick]

Originally posted by: Aluvus
You can take one from one computer to another, yes.

However, "hot-swappable" specifically means that you could perform that operation with the computers running. SATA officially supports this, though I'm told some implementations are... shall we say... less than perfect.

Yeah, you need a hot-swappable controller, with hot-swappable trays, and I wouldn't try it on a drive that I cared about the data on.

 

[JoeFahey]

No.