IDE Hot Swap Capability for Mix of HD and CD?

I have a question about hot swapping of IDE which pertains to a mod I'm trying to do currently.

If thought about like a VCR, we're thinking of having a bunch of various components, like secondary hard drives and CD/DVD drives mounted within a set of interchangable tapes, as space is at a premium.

Is there a convenient way to do this with IDE drives? Most of what I've seen seems to be in the flavor of RAID solutions for HD's only. However, maybe this would work if I only put a single drive into a hot swap capable IDE RAID controller, or does it always need at least one physical functioning disc? Hopefully there is a better way I don't know of though.

Speaking of which, barring active read/write to the drives, what is the main impediment to hot swap? Is it mainly connector discharge issues that something like an intermediary quick connect could handle? I assume the RAID controllers are doing something similar when you switch, like sealing off electrical pathways to the drive.

Thanks for any help you can give.

I do not believe that IDE is able to cope with hot swap.

You MAY find IDE RAID controllers that will happily do something called hot spare, this is different (means that in your RAID array, you will set up a drive that is empty, but plugged in, and should one of your array drives fail, then this 'hot spare' will instantly jump in and be used to re-create the array)

I think that some forms of SCSI are capable of being hot-plugged, but I'm not sure about IDE.

If you can manage to obtain perhaps an old server from an office, which has loads of hard drives in, then you might be able to use the controller, and perhaps some IDE<->SCSI converters to make it hot plug, but i'm afraid i'm not even 50% sure whether such converters exist, and whether they would like being hot-plugged.


If you're trying to make a media center type machine (i'm guessing so, due to the use of a VCR) then it might be an idea to set up another computer as a file-server, with all your media and stuff on it, and network the two computers (VCR and server) together, with a DVD drive permanently in the VCR. Even a 10Mbit network can happily cope with two to three seperate DivX files playing over it, so there's no need to worry about speeds on your network (or overloading an existing one)


Good luck!

-Blueacid

Actually, this description was somewhat misleading. The machine itself is actually meant as a portable lanning machine, however, the way in which swappable components are to be inserted into it is in the manner of a VCR or similar type of cartridge/bay connection. The main reason for this is simply a lack of space within the original frame, which is just barely big enough for the supply, board, and primary HD. We might be able to fit in some really low profile cards if we're lucky, but we're trying to avoid them if possible.

Another way you might like to try then, is perhaps to find a way of installing two hard drives, and make them both fairly large capacity (120gigs or more)

Then, using a program such as Daemon Tools, or Alcohol 120% (google will help you here) you can copy your game CDs to the hard drive, for playing games without needing the CD drive.