Simulate eject of eSATA disk by disabling it?

[Bert Hyman]

Windows XP Pro SP3

My system doesn't have support for "hot swapping" eSATA, so there's no
eject or "safely remove" option.

Is disabling an eSATA disk a safe alternative? Will the OS and disk
internal cache be flushed?

 

[Grant]

Windows XP Pro SP3

My system doesn't have support for "hot swapping" eSATA, so there's no
eject or "safely remove" option.

Is disabling an eSATA disk a safe alternative? Will the OS and disk
internal cache be flushed?

Simply perform a normal shutdown in that case. You need mobo support
for hotswap, can't be reliably faked.

By disabling a disk you're perhaps telling the OS not to care?

Grant.

 

[Bert Hyman]

In Grant

Simply perform a normal shutdown in that case. You need mobo support
for hotswap, can't be reliably faked.

Well, it's an external disk that I'd like to disconnect and move WITHOUT
shutting down the system.

By disabling a disk you're perhaps telling the OS not to care?

That's what I was wondering: how much "not caring" is going on? Will it
simply discard what's in the OS cache?

 

[Grant]

In Grant


Well, it's an external disk that I'd like to disconnect and move WITHOUT
shutting down the system.


That's what I was wondering: how much "not caring" is going on? Will it
simply discard what's in the OS cache?

Turn off write caching? Slow things down a bit, but not so much for
archival storage, that way the data is written before the command
completes. Start from the Device Manager -> disk drive -> device
-> policy -> disable write caching.

Grant.

 

[Arno]

Windows XP Pro SP3

My system doesn't have support for "hot swapping" eSATA, so there's no
eject or "safely remove" option.

Is disabling an eSATA disk a safe alternative? Will the OS and disk
internal cache be flushed?

Good question. A classical umount under any Unix includes a hard
flush to disk before it returns. The question here is how well
MS has copied this. Given the number of mistakes they made when
copying other things, I would not depend it doing a flush.

What you can do is get an eSATA controller that is know to
have hot-swap support with your OS.

Arno

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

My system doesn't have support for "hot swapping" eSATA, so there's no
eject or "safely remove" option.

Google HotSwap! (with the !). Works for me with an internal hot-plug
SATA caddy.