Can't swap SATA drive between two XP Pro SP1 computers

[JT]

I've got a Dell 400SC and a Dell SC420, both vaguely similar (they
have different motherboards).

Both are running XP Pro SP1

The 400SC has a couple of IDE drives and a Seagate 200GB SATA. It's
not a boot drive. The 420 has just one drive, a 160GB Maxtor SATA.

I wanted to be able to move the Seagate between the two so I got a
couple of SATA racks (Kingwin KF-72, (which turns out to be a tight
fit)

When I put the Seagate in the tray in the same computer where it had
been permanent, it continued to work fine except that every time I
boot, the system tells me the drive wasn't shut down properly and
wants to check it. No errors are found.

When I put the drive in the tray in the 420, it's not recognized. Disk
manager knows it's there, but says it has a "foreign" file system.

Help?

 

[Vanguard]

I've got a Dell 400SC and a Dell SC420, both vaguely similar (they
have different motherboards).

Both are running XP Pro SP1

The 400SC has a couple of IDE drives and a Seagate 200GB SATA. It's
not a boot drive. The 420 has just one drive, a 160GB Maxtor SATA.

I wanted to be able to move the Seagate between the two so I got a
couple of SATA racks (Kingwin KF-72, (which turns out to be a tight
fit)

When I put the Seagate in the tray in the same computer where it had
been permanent, it continued to work fine except that every time I
boot, the system tells me the drive wasn't shut down properly and
wants to check it. No errors are found.

Sounds like you just got a passive tray that doesn't notify the system
of the device removal. Of course, you yanking the drive while the power
is still on is bad for the drive (and mobo circuitry) plus the platters
are still spinning and you'll damage the heads or platter. You don't
mention what the removable drive chassis has for features but maybe it
protects you from removing a still-powered, still-spinning hard drive.
Maybe it uses an electro-magnetic lock with a capacitor for delay in
releasing a mechanism to prevent removal of the drive until you have
powered down the system and the drive has probably stopped spinning.
Oops, you're talking about a Kingwin unit. Nevermind.

In any case, have you configured the removable drive (which apparently
has no software installed for the drive chassis to let the OS know of
removal) so that caching is disabled (which will slow down the drive)?
In Device Manager, look at the properties for the hard drive. Disable
write caching for that drive. Then select to optimize for quick
removal.

When I put the drive in the tray in the 420, it's not recognized. Disk
manager knows it's there, but says it has a "foreign" file system.

The drive has to be part of the hardware of your system BEFORE the
operating system loads which then detects hardware on load up. A lot of
drive chassis are just passive devices that provide a means of quickly
connecting/disconnecting their power and signal cables. That is not
sufficient to provide notification to the OS of the removal and
insertion of hardware. Insert the removable hard drive while the 420 is
powered down and then boot up.

Is the Kingwin drive tray designed to be used as a *hot-swap* tray?
From what little description there was at
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-121-163&depa=1
and
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-121-114&depa=1
(where I buy a lot of stuff online), there is no mention that it is a
HOT-SWAP drive tray. It is highly unlikely you are getting a *hot-swap*
rack & tray pair for a piddly $20. Kingwin's article at
http://www.kingwin.com/support_faq.asp?Category=Mobile Rack#35 says
their drive trays are not truly hot-swappable.

Are you powering down, waiting for the drives to stop spinning, swapping
or inserting the mobile drive, and then powering up to boot into the OS?
It is possible the Kingwin unit includes protection circuitry that lets
you remove/insert a drive while it is still powered (but you still run
into being careful about the platters still spinning) but at $14 for the
chassis and $8 per tray then these might just be cheap passive units
that merely disconnect the power and signal cable (hopefully in the
right order). The Kingwin's are cheap passive drive trays. Hot-swap
drive trays will cost you about $80, and up.

Because of geometry translation to make a drive *logically* larger (LBA
mode which almost always triggers geometry translation), it is possible
that the geometry translation is different between different host. How
one BIOS and the IDE controller it uses tranlate a drive may not be the
same as a different host's BIOS and controller's translation. Now
you're adding SATA into the mix and that's a new spec that has different
means of implementing SATA in the hardware (might be bridged, might be
direct) and perhaps using controllers from different vendors. SATA is
not a mature hardware technology like ATAPI (IDE).

Yeah, them both being Dells doesn't mean anything regarding their
hardware. Dells sells by spec, not by compatibility of hardware. You
buy model X one week and it is composed of a specific set of hardware
but next week that same model X has a whole bunch of different hardware,
and you're talking about different models. One week model X has a
Promise IDE controller to provide UDMA-133 support and the next they use
a different mobo with different BIOS and controller chips that provides
built-in UDMA-133 support. Dell slaps together whatever matches the
sales spec for the cheapest hardware they have that week.

 

[JT]

Although the tray calls itself hot swap I have not interest in using
that feature. In every case the drive was in the rack before the
computer was turned on.

 

[Jetro]

Did you try to import a foreign disk if 'file system' is just a typo?

 

[Vanguard]

Although the tray calls itself hot swap I have not interest in using
that feature. In every case the drive was in the rack before the
computer was turned on.

Have you tried swapping the SATA drive in and out and back in on the
Dell 400SC not by using the Kingwin drive tray but instead just yanking
the power and signal cable, boot, test, power down, reconnect the power
and signal cable, reboot, and test again? Basically you need to find
out first if the hardware and OS work okay with the drive getting
removed and then reinserted but using the "permanent" connections. If
that works but using the tray does not work then: (1) Tray is bad (bent
pin, loose pin, damaged circuit board); or, (2) you don't have the
signal cable properly connected (reversed, damaged during setup change,
wrong type, not fully seated).

I'd say to go back to checking if the SATA drive will use the regular or
permanent connections to see if it still works. It that still works and
the tray doesn't then the fault is in the tray in a defect or its setup.

 

[JT]

Sorry, I don't understand the q. XP disk administrator identifies the
file system as "foreign" just as for the boot drive in the system it
says "NTFS". Are you saying there's a tool I click to make the OS
reevaluate the drive and recognize it differently?

 

[Jetro]

Please read built-in Help (Win+F1) about "To move disks to another computer"
and "Disk status descriptions".

 

[Yves Leclerc]

It sounds like BOTH systems may be using different SATA controllers and that
the drivers are not compatible between each.

 

[JT]

You're saying SATA is such a badly-defined (or badly-implemented)
standard that I can't move a working drive from one working controller
to another working controller? That would seem to be a fatal flaw -
even though you might not plan to move a drive as I did, a motherboard
or controller failure could force you to do it, and you'd rather not
have to search out a "compatible" replacement controller that Saturday
night.

 

[Bob I]

Nobody defined the controller hardware only the interface and protocol.
Same thing goes for "PATA", or SCSI controllers.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

There are only a handful of manufacturers that make SATA hardware. They
seem to all use different drivers but all of those drivers can handle the
SATA drives correctly. It may mean that you need to install the different
drivers so that the hard drive can be read on the different SATA controller.

This is similar to when you set up SCSI drives. If you use one driver for
the SCSI host interface, this will mean that you must use that interface
until you replace the driver or you will not access the data.

SATA standards are just starting. SATA standards has drive hot-swap but it
is still not implemented yet.