Does sata hot swap not work on all motherboards these days?

[Red Squirrel]

I think I just found out the hard way that not all motherboards support hot swap with sata.

Is this possible? I installed a Gigabyte B75M-D3H motherboard for a server which has a 4 bay hot swap enclosure. When I put a drive in and type dmesg I get nothing. I have to reboot it. Is this really the case, that not all motherboards support hot swap? This really blows. Is there any way I can make this work? Maybe convert to USB or something? USB sticks work fine.

 

[abekl]

As I understand it, SATA does not support hot swapping, but eSATA does. Is this correct? Can anybody verify this?

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

You need AHCI enabled in the Bios. And if you run Windows you'll need a fix if you enable it after install.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

 

[Red Squirrel]

As I understand it, SATA does not support hot swapping, but eSATA does. Is this correct? Can anybody verify this?

It's always worked fine for me. All the servers I've built either used onboard sata connected to an external cage/backplane or used separate adapters.

I just changed it to AHCI but nothing changed. Is there any other setting I might have to change? I also thought changing that setting would require to reinstall the OS, but it booted up fine. I don't care if I do have to reinstall though as I did not really configure anything yet. Though, maybe I now have to reinstall for it to work because I changed it after the fact? Running Debian 7.5 (I think).

 

[Whisper2]

As stated above, you do need AHCI. I have a recent Gigabyte Z87 Desktop board and the BIOS has settings for each SATA port -- separate from the SATA controller mode (AHCI, etc.). Hot Plug is one of the settings and it is turned off by default. The SATA settings are under a tab that falls under the Peripherals Section.

I assume that Gigabyte's server BIOS' are somewhat similar. Hope this helps.

 

[stlc8tr]

What AHCI drivers are you using? On my Z87 board, if I use the Microsoft AHCI drivers, the hotswap option appears in Windows. But if I use the Intel AHCI (RST) drivers, the hotswap option goes away and I have to use the Hotswap! utility to safely remove the drive.

http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

 

[Red Squirrel]

Found the bios option, does indeed turn out I have to enable hot plug for each sata port. First time I see such an option, but good to know. It works now.

No clue what driver I'm using, this is something that normally just works. I do dmesg and see the drive info show up.

 

[2is]

You need AHCI and a lot of BIOS' have a specific toggle to enable hot swap. There's no difference between esata and sata besides the connector.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You need AHCI and a lot of BIOS' have a specific toggle to enable hot swap. There's no difference between esata and sata besides the connector.

Yeah that's what ended up happening, found both of those options and now it works.

Which reminds me, the raid rebuild is done now. It's green drives though so I have a feeling drives will randomly drop out due to going to sleep, but I'll keep an eye open, it looks like this latest version of mdadm might actually account for that since the raid is up and has been idle since the rebuild ended, which was probably this morning some time.

 

[2is]

Yeah, Green's aren't very RAID friendly.

 

[waqas850]

I think, it is work on it.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I have a server that I assumed simply didn't support the hot swapping of SATA drives. The motherboard is a Tyan S5211G2NR server board with Intel 3210 chipset, and it's running Windows Server 2008 R2. I looked into the manual and found the following two BIOS settings:

SATA AHCI Enable
This item allows you to enable the SATA AHCI functionality.
Options: Disabled / Enabled (default: Disabled)

SATA AHCI Legacy Enable
[Enabled]: SATA and PATA drives are auto-detected and placed in Legacy Mode.
[Disabled]: SATA and PATA drives are auto-detected and placed in Native IDE mode.
Options: Disabled / Enabled (default: Disabled)

Would it be necessary to also enable the second setting to permit hot swapping? I'm not sure I understand what it does.

 

[TerryMathews]

I have a server that I assumed simply didn't support the hot swapping of SATA drives. The motherboard is a Tyan S5211G2NR server board with Intel 3210 chipset, and it's running Windows Server 2008 R2. I looked into the manual and found the following two BIOS settings:



Would it be necessary to also enable the second setting to permit hot swapping? I'm not sure I understand what it does.

Second setting should be disabled I believe, you want native AHCI mode for hot swap, not ATA emulation.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Thanks!

 

[Carson Dyle]

I'm finally getting around to trying to enable AHCI and hot plug SATA on my system. Every time I enable SATA AHCI Windows fails to load and reboots the system. It displays the initial Windows graphical screen with a progress bar for may 10 seconds, then craps out. FWIW, I'm booting from a 64GB Sumsung 830 SSD.

I have the following driver files in a folder from the Tyan support site for the motherboard, but have no idea how to install them. Windows won't allow me to install directly from either inf file. Not sure if it would help, in any case.

iaahci.cat
iaAHCI.inf
iastor.cat
iaStor.inf
IaStor.sys
license.txt
TXTSETUP.OEM

 

[TerryMathews]

I'm finally getting around to trying to enable AHCI and hot plug SATA on my system. Every time I enable SATA AHCI Windows fails to load and reboots the system. It displays the initial Windows graphical screen with a progress bar for may 10 seconds, then craps out. FWIW, I'm booting from a 64GB Sumsung 830 SSD.

I have the following driver files in a folder from the Tyan support site for the motherboard, but have no idea how to install them. Windows won't allow me to install directly from either inf file. Not sure if it would help, in any case.

iaahci.cat
iaAHCI.inf
iastor.cat
iaStor.inf
IaStor.sys
license.txt
TXTSETUP.OEM

If you were originally installed in ATA emulation mode and now you're trying to switch to AHCI it's not simple.

See if this describes your situation: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

 

[2is]

There's a registry hack you can do to get windows to boot in AHCI mode after the fact but in my experience it never quite works right unless windows was initially installed with AHCI enabled to begin with.

 

[Carson Dyle]

If you were originally installed in ATA emulation mode and now you're trying to switch to AHCI it's not simple.

See if this describes your situation: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

Hard to say if it's that same error message, but it makes sense.

I've made the small registry change and ... it booted! Upon logging in, it showed a message in the system tray about a new device driver being installed. Then it asked to be rebooted again. Rebooted a second time and so far, it's working fine.

Hot swap doesn't seem to be working, though. I swapped one HDD for another and the old one disappeared, but the new one doesn't show. I put the old drive back in and it still doesn't appear. I just have one less HDD.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah if you switch modes after the OS is installed chances are you'll have to reinstall.

In my case I did not have to reinstall Linux though, so maybe Linux is better with that.

What stumps me is why it's not set as default to begin with.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Yeah if you switch modes after the OS is installed chances are you'll have to reinstall.

In my case I did not have to reinstall Linux though, so maybe Linux is better with that.

What stumps me is why it's not set as default to begin with.

You're suggesting that hot swap doesn't work because the AHCI driver wasn't installed when Windows was installed?

The driver is now obviously running, as the system is booting and in the system tray I now have the 'Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media' icon. But it's not recognizing any newly connected drives.

 

[TerryMathews]

You're suggesting that hot swap doesn't work because the AHCI driver wasn't installed when Windows was installed?

The driver is now obviously running, as the system is booting and in the system tray I now have the 'Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media' icon. But it's not recognizing any newly connected drives.

It's possible your board doesn't support hot swap. Mine has it in a third option in the BIOS and if its not enabled hot swap doesn't work.

 

[Carson Dyle]

It's possible your board doesn't support hot swap. Mine has it in a third option in the BIOS and if its not enabled hot swap doesn't work.

Yes, it is a separate option in the BIOS, and it is enabled. Once SATA AHCI is enabled in the BIOS, the 'Hot Plug' option appears below it.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Any idea of how to go about installing the Tyan/Intel AHCI driver that I have? I've found that the driver running on the system is iaStorV.sys, which is a generic Microsoft driver. The one I have is iaStor.sys.

 

[TerryMathews]

Any idea of how to go about installing the Tyan/Intel AHCI driver that I have? I've found that the driver running on the system is iaStorV.sys, which is a generic Microsoft driver. The one I have is iaStor.sys.

I wouldn't mess around with a vendor specific one, I'd go download the correct Intel RST based on your chipset.

I believe your board uses ICH9R and as such this is the last officially supported RST for you.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I wouldn't mess around with a vendor specific one, I'd go download the correct Intel RST based on your chipset.

I believe your board uses ICH9R and as such this is the last officially supported RST for you.

I downloaded the RST driver installer, but it wouldn't install. However, there was an updated Matrix Storage Manager on the Intel site: 8.9.0, same version as the Tyan one. Installed that and it installed a new driver ...

It's working now.

Thanks!!