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Is SATA hot swappable?

monkey333

Senior member
If I ran a SATA cable out of my case and plugged it into a drive with external power, would it work?
I've got one of those SATA to usb adapters, but my pc isn't seeing the drive connected that way.

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As dac7nco said, it depends on the motherboard, or more specifically the chipset.

Also, though SATA2 controllers support hot-swap I don't think this will function via a USB adapter. I think it only works over SATA/eSATA ports.
 
Well, is not USB hot swappable?

Yes USB is hot swappable, but USB storage devices tend to be detected as just that; "removable disk/storage" as windows like to call it. I'm not sure if this will invoke the correct protocol for the disk to be detected as a hard drive by the SATA controller. Not to mention caching options.

SATA needs to be set for AHCI if you want hot-swappable.

Good point, forgot about that! Thanks!
 
SATA needs to be set for AHCI if you want hot-swappable.

Yeah, the OS has to support it, the BIOS has to fully support it, and you need to be in AHCI mode.
There are also some ports that don't support hot-swap, even if you are in AHCI mode, because it wasn't enabled in the BIOS.
 
Yes USB is hot swappable, but USB storage devices tend to be detected as just that; "removable disk/storage" as windows like to call it. I'm not sure if this will invoke the correct protocol for the disk to be detected as a hard drive by the SATA controller. Not to mention caching options.
The SATA controller will not be involved in a USB connected drive..
 
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