Hot swapping SATA? And enclosures/racks that support this?

[CheetahMk2]

I asked this question in HT about SATA but they were of very little help. Does anyone in here know if there are any enclosures or racks out there that support hot swapping? I have an IDE drive I plan to put in an external enclosure with SATA and hook that to my motherboard, but I am not sure if SATA even allows drives to be shut off mid-use like USB.

I remember hearing about some smart mobile rack that you pressed a button and a special signal was sent via the rack's electronics to remove the drive, but that was different - that was for a drive with SATA interface. Can anyone offer any help about this issue? Does anyone pull thieir SATA drives (or ATA bridged drives) anytime while running?

I am figuring as long as you 'uninstall' the drive in device manager it should be fine, but is there a utility or something that will allow me to see it in the Add/Remove Hardware tray if I so choose? I know how to "Optimize a drive for fast disconnect" and remove the system page file/system restore from any drive, but not if it is actually safe for the motherboard.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

samsung sata drives are hot swappable....i have two samsung spinpoint sata drives......u cant here them at all, and when i installed windows i had the remove hardware safely icon in the tray near the clock.....i was like :s ?

turns out its for the hard drives....i can turn them off in windows then pull them out!!! then whack em back in an spin em up again!! i was like cool!

 

[CheetahMk2]

Heh, what if you did that by mistake and hit it while it was running? I dunno how windows knows to make it like that, or how to diable that if you wanted. This is just idle conjecture, of course.

 

[JaRb0y]

western digital claims that all there sata hard drives are hot swappable.
maxtor's maxline III and diamondmax 10 are also hot swappable.

i think any enclosure will do, just the hard drives need to be hot swappable.

 

[Zepper]

Places like SCSI4Me.com, HyperMicro, or PC-PitStop.com have hot-swap SATA cages for 4 or 5 drives. They aren't cheap...
.bh.

:moon:

 

[futuristicmonkey]

Check out Vantec. Go to products then look for the Easy Swap, or 2 - depending on the look you want.

 

[CheetahMk2]

I think I might have gotten the wrong answer.

I am basically using a IDE to SATA bridge board.... and I want to know if Windows will recognize the drive as hot swappable. Or how to do it if it doesn't.

 

[Hardlin]

You're going to need a real SATA adapter and an easy way to get to the drive. Your best bet is probably a special enclosure like the above Vantec or an Adaptec

 

[CheetahMk2]

I was thinking of something more like this. It would basically be internal drive speeds with a removable drive, with the downward compatability of USB/Firewire.

 

[Hardlin]

I would guess XP would see that as a hot plug device. Most external enclosures that support USB/Firewire support hot plugging.

 

[CheetahMk2]

No, it does not. I have tried.

FWIW, I found the solution myself - the answer is *here*. The capability is supported on Silicon Image bridge chips if you perform that procedure, but the drive should be power cycled after each removal. (Additional link)

Another good idea would be to disable System Restore & Recycle bin on that drive.