View Full Version : Is SATA Hot Swapable ?
phrkshw
10-27-05, 09:58 AM
Have a friend of mine that says you can just swap out a SATA drive with the power on . Anyone know for sure ?
White Runner
10-27-05, 10:03 AM
Ive head it is possible, and i have unplugged a sata drive, both power and data cables... but i havent tried plugging one in while its on... anyone willing to test or enlighten us?
Quailane
10-27-05, 10:15 AM
Have a friend of mine that says you can just swap out a SATA drive with the power on . Anyone know for sure ?
Yes you can. Windows acts like they are usb thumb drives as far as adding and removing them.
phrkshw
10-27-05, 10:35 AM
Not to be an ass but is there any documentation to back that up ? I've been looking and came up with zilch .
Just wondering , thats why I save my really good questions for the guys and gals here at the OCFORUMS .
Know Nuttin
10-27-05, 10:42 AM
SATA is hot swappable.
if you install the drivers, you should see the "safely remove device" icon in your system tray. Major annoyance to some who only have 1 drive and obviously can't remove that drive while "hot".
White Runner
10-27-05, 11:07 AM
I have multiple sata drives in my pc and have never seen the safely remove hardware icon with any satas drives listed... only when i have my usb flash drive hooked up do i see it (or my camera etc...)
mysubaruimp
10-27-05, 12:08 PM
Read the stickies at the top of the section. :cool:
Dukeman
10-27-05, 12:40 PM
The following is from the SATA 1.0 specification available here (http://serialata.org/docs/serialata10a.pdf)
6.3.2 Objectives
The basic guidelines for Serial ATA connectors and cables are
• Supporting 1.5 Gbps date rate with headroom for 3.0 Gbps speed
• Cost competitive to Ultra ATA connector and cable
• Facilitating smooth transition from Ultra ATA to Serial ATA
• Common connector interface for both 2.5” and 3.5” devices From those guidelines, the following connector and cable objectives are derived:
• Minimal discontinuity at connectors
• Good impedance control for cable
• 0 to 1 meter cable length
• Low profile, fitting in the 2.5” drive
• Blind-mateable
• Hot-pluggable by means of staggered contacts
• Supporting power delivery with 12.0 V, 5.0 V, and 3.3 V voltages
6.3.3 General descriptions
A Serial ATA device may be either directly connected to a host or connected to a host through a cable. For direct connection, the device plug connector, shown as (a) and (b) in Figure 5, is inserted directly into a host receptacle connector, illustrated as (g) in Figure 5. The device plug connector and the host receptacle connector incorporate features that enable the direct connection to be hot pluggable and blind mateable.
Technically cabled (Non-direct connect) systems are not supported as hot pluggable, but as you can see some people here have had success hot plugging drives. I just tried it with two NTFS formatted SATA drives with mixed success. One drive was recognized after the swap only after I rescanned with Device Manager. The second time I tried to swap the system locked up. This could be driver issue, BIOS issue or drive issue. Anyway, I recommend more research.
Quailane
10-27-05, 06:34 PM
I have multiple sata drives in my pc and have never seen the safely remove hardware icon with any satas drives listed... only when i have my usb flash drive hooked up do i see it (or my camera etc...)
I get the safely remove hardware icon. What is your OS? I am running xp pro sp2.
Randyman...
10-27-05, 06:45 PM
I don't have the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon either using the ICH5R in PC#1 in my sig (in RAID or IDE modes), or in my Shuttle PC (PC#2 in sig) with the ICH6R in IDE mode, or in my other PC also with a ICH5R (all with SATA drives - no PATA's except for Opticals). I run XP-Pro or XP-Home (both w/SP-2 Slipstreamed), and installed the "INF" Intel Chipset Drivers on all 3 PC's right after the OS install...
Go figure. The "Safely Remove Devices" icon pops up for ANY USB or FW device I connect, but never for a SATA HD on all 3 of my PC's...
:cool:
White Runner
10-27-05, 09:26 PM
xp pro sp2, with all the updates... same on both rigs in my sig.
MisterEd
10-27-05, 09:39 PM
The original SATA spec called for hot-swappable drives. It is probably not supported with all controllers and connectors. If it is supported with the controller and driver for it then you would expect to see an icon in the tray to safely remove the drive like USB drives are. The right connectors are also required. Hot-swappable SATA cables (both power and data) require the ground pins to be longer than the other pins. This means that the grounds are already connected when the other pins are connected/disconnected. This avoids floating data lines.
There were shortcoming with Serial ATA 1.0 with regard to hot-swapability. Serial ATA 2.0 now incorporates upgrades that will allow external SATA to possibly be as rugged as USB 2.0 drives but allow much higher data transfer speeds.
Some people have also suggested that write caching should be turned off for any drive that is to be hot-swapped.
External SATA (eSATA)
http://www.sata-io.org/esata.asp
Depends on the drivers provided by your chipset manufacturer. You'll notice that intel southbridges never report drives as being hot swappable to windows, but some nV drivers do.
Windows XP disables write caching on any drive that shows up as a removable device by default.
Intel ICH6R and ICH7R support hot swapping when in AHCI or RAID mode - not Standard IDE. If you have one of these controllers you shouldn't be running in IDE mode anyways - or else you lose all the benefits of SATA. It's funny how many people go the extra mile to get a NCQ drive and then leave the controller in Standard IDE mode :rolleyes: (this is why some people also ask "Why is my SATA-300 drive only reported working at ATA-100 speeds?" - as intel never supported ATA-133).
Hot swapping was optional is SATA-1. All SATA-II devices should do it.
LoneWolf121188
10-27-05, 11:17 PM
hmmm...so if you had two SATA drives, one with windows, one with another OS (linux, vista, server, take your pick), no internal HDDs, and an external SATA port...then you could choose which OS you wanted just by plugging in a different drive! cool!
MisterEd
10-28-05, 08:27 AM
hmmm...so if you had two SATA drives, one with windows, one with another OS (linux, vista, server, take your pick), no internal HDDs, and an external SATA port...then you could choose which OS you wanted just by plugging in a different drive! cool!
We had a requirement to be able to plug in different boot drives with IDE drives. The only way with classified computers for one drive to not contaminate the other was to only have one drive connected to the computer at a time. The way that was done was to have removable drive bays in the same internal 5-1/4in ones as the CD/DVD drives. The number of boot drives was only limited by the number of drives in removable carriers you had. This was also to keep the classified information on a particular one from being seen by anyone not authorized to see it. Ideally classifed data is compartmentalised which is reason for the expression "for your eyes only".
Of course these IDE drives are not hot swappable. Of course removing the boot drive on any system is bad. Any time the boot drive is removed on any system it must be shut down anyways.
dreammmatt
10-28-05, 09:45 AM
I did not get the 'removable' icon when I was using an NF2 board with a SilImage chip, but this NF4 with integrated SATA does give me the icon, so perhaps the chipset used has something to do with it. When a friend and I tried hot swapping a drive in his system (when he was also using an NF2 board) it caused the system to freeze.
White Runner
10-28-05, 10:05 AM
ALAS,
Last nite, I successfully hot swapped a sata drive... so apparently this myth is true :o
For all those that are hesitant, give it a try.
I did not get the 'removable' icon when I was using an NF2 board with a SilImage chip, but this NF4 with integrated SATA does give me the icon, so perhaps the chipset used has something to do with it.
Depends on the drivers provided by your chipset manufacturer. You'll notice that intel southbridges never report drives as being hot swappable to windows, but some nV drivers do.
Dubbedoutgeo27
10-28-05, 12:01 PM
Personally...I've had success when hot swapping an PATA drive...just dont tell your IT teacher that its okay to do that, lol.
phrkshw
10-28-05, 12:16 PM
Thanks for all the advice !!! I'll put it to good use .
dreammmatt
10-28-05, 04:05 PM
Personally...I've had success when hot swapping an PATA drive...just dont tell your IT teacher that its okay to do that, lol.
lol, awesome :cool:
I'll assume that it worked cuz it was strictly a data drive that didnt have any active processes linking to it?
White Runner
10-28-05, 04:15 PM
I also heard that sata is hot swappable, because the contacts of the cables can be connected and disconnected simultaneosly; where as pata's 4pin molex/ ide cabling can make partial contact... dunno if this is true or not, i think i read it here somewhere...
MisterEd
10-29-05, 04:03 PM
I also heard that sata is hot swappable, because the contacts of the cables can be connected and disconnected simultaneosly; where as pata's 4pin molex/ ide cabling can make partial contact... dunno if this is true or not, i think i read it here somewhere...
SATA is hot swappable because the ground pins are longer than the others. Thus the ground pins connect first and disconnect last. This avoids bad things happening when you have a floating ground.
I used to swap sata drives until 2 of them died on me. Don't know if that is what did it, but I stopped doing it just in case. I think the documantation says it is hot swappable tough. Anyway, if you do it, just remeber to unplug the data cable before the power. My system used to freeze sometimes if didn't
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