Hot-swapping SATA inside PC

[Mark M]

There are drive tray to allow you to hot-swap SATA drives. But
rather than using removeable trays, is it possible to hot-swap SATA
drives by disconnecting the power and the data cables of one SATA
drive and then reconnecting a different SATA drive?

 

[Rod Speed]

There are drive tray to allow you to hot-swap SATA drives.

Yes, and they arent that cheap.

But rather than using removeable trays, is it possible to hot-swap
SATA drives by disconnecting the power and the data cables of
one SATA drive and then reconnecting a different SATA drive?

Yes, the standard allows for that. Mostly in the design of the power
connector that ensures that OV is connected first on insertion and
last on removal. Hot plugging of the data cable is nothing special,
its been around for a long time now with CAT5 and USB etc.

 

[Arno Wagner]

There are drive tray to allow you to hot-swap SATA drives. But
rather than using removeable trays, is it possible to hot-swap SATA
drives by disconnecting the power and the data cables of one SATA
drive and then reconnecting a different SATA drive?

The hardware supports this and the connectors where designed so
that the ground lines connect first.

However whether you OS can cope with an IDE disk vanishing and another
one truning up in its place is another matter.

Arno

 

[Mark M]

The hardware supports this and the connectors where designed so
that the ground lines connect first.

However whether you OS can cope with an IDE disk vanishing and
another one truning up in its place is another matter.

Do you know if WinXP copes properly with an IDE disk being replaced?

 

[idunno]

Do you know if WinXP copes properly with an IDE disk being replaced?

If your PC is fully ACPI Compliant you hot remove a number or devices
(esp HDDs) by uninstalling them from device manager.