Hot Swapping a SATA drive in Windows 2000 and XP.

[Nathan McNulty]

I have 2 SATA ports, but only one SATA drive I can use internally. I
can switch SATA ports when the computer is off (since it is the system
drive, I can't hotswap this one), but both are controlled by the ICHR5
chipset. The external that I use that is SATA in my rack I am not going
to mess with since it has work on it and it really isn't mine to play
with. Even with a good backup I would not be willing to mess around
with it

Maybe I'll just steal a SATA card from a friend or something

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Using the ICHR5 chipset on Windows XP MCE (just an addon to
Professional). The motherboard is an ASUS P4P800. Don't need a specific
driver (unless you are talking about chipset drivers in which case I am
using the Intel INF Update Utility 6.0.1.1006 WHQL drivers) since it
isn't RAID and it is just using one of the onboard ports.

 

[Brian Taylor]

And you don't have to tell it to disable, or uninstall, or anything like
that? You just unplug it and it is fine? Can you plug another or the same
drive in without rebooting?

I used Intel D865GBFLK motherboards in the servers and they have 2 on-board
SATA ports running off of the ICH5 southbridge, and I tried to hot swap with
them but it didnt work. Now, I suppose the difference could be the ICH5R
apparently has some difference in the SATA since it supports RAID while the
plain ICH 5 does not. It could also be that one supports hot swap while the
other does not. I sure wish I could confirm that before I purchased another
$500 in motherboards and video cards. The boards I have now have on-board
video, and unfortunately Intel doesn't seem to make an ICH5R board with
on-board graphics. I would really prefer to stick with Intel if possible.

If it fixes the problem it would be worth it, but I hate to spend that much
and be right back where I am right now.

Brian Taylor

 

[Nathan McNulty]

What drivers are you using? You may just not have the drivers that have
added this SATA Support. I know it didn't work for me with the drivers
that came with my motherboard, but the latest drivers work. I do have
to use the Safeley Remove Hardware Icon, but I have never had any
errors. We use something similar to this:
http://www.circotech.com/mb122sk-se...-kit-with-blue-lcd-display-ata-mb-122-sk.html

I am not sure about Windows 2000 since I use XP. But I can unplug the
drive while Windows is running without problems and then plug it back in
later and it works fine. Now I did mess things up by unplugging the
drive while in suspend mode, then added data, and plugged it back in and
resumed. Not a good idea

What do you mean by it didn't work when you tried it? Did the system
reboot? Which drives were you trying to pull out? You can't unplug the
system or boot drive. Only a secondary drive that is not part of a RAID
setup can be unplugged while Windows is running.

 

[Brian Taylor]

I tried hooking the 5th hot swap bay up to the on-board SATA ports on the
Intel D865GBFLK motherboard. Booted into Windows 2000 Server and inserted
hard drive - result: hard lock. Booted back into Windows then shut down
normally. Inserted hard drive, booted into Windows 2000 Server drive was
recognized and functional. No "removable device" icon. Removed hard drive
and after some time get the "Unsafe Removal" error and "Delayed Write
Failed."

I think I've come to the conclusion that SATA hot-swap is a joke. It would
be nice if it functioned more like USB pen drives, and maybe it will in the
future.

As for my situation, I found a tolerable solution, though it's not exactly
what I wanted. I will set up a DevCon job
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q311272) to remove
the hard drive device when the backup successfully completes. If you
disable the hard drive, it remains disabled the next time you insert it, so
you have to remove it. This works since it's pretty much a set time when I
want to switch drives, namely one a week when we swap backup media. Not
what I had hoped for, but it works.

The idea of using SATA drives in the manner described above seems to be
pretty popular. As soon as I find a SATA controller that funtions in that
way I will puchase at least a half a dozen.

Brian Taylor

 

[Chris S]

Brian - thanks for the link to the 'DevCon' utility; looks very
useful. By the sound of it, it's only doing at the command line
what you can do in the device manager, so I don't think it will help
me.

In my case, I've already tried 'disabling' and/or 'uninstalling' the
drive in device manager. When I do this, though, Windows always wants
to reboot ('your hardware settings have changed ... must reboot ...
want to restart now?'). If I don't reboot, but then power down the
drive (and later re-connect the drive), files copied to the drive are
not there. If I have the drive powered up and connected on startup of
windows, it detects that the drive is 'dirty' and does some recovery,
and I find a 'found' folder on the drive with lots of files in it.

The above applies to my 'work' system, using a maxtor pci card
(promise chipset). I'll try it on my home system (Adaptec pci card,
silicon image chipset).

I tried hooking the 5th hot swap bay up to the on-board SATA ports on the
Intel D865GBFLK motherboard. Booted into Windows 2000 Server and inserted
hard drive - result: hard lock. Booted back into Windows then shut down
normally. Inserted hard drive, booted into Windows 2000 Server drive was
recognized and functional. No "removable device" icon. Removed hard drive
and after some time get the "Unsafe Removal" error and "Delayed Write
Failed."

I think I've come to the conclusion that SATA hot-swap is a joke. It would
be nice if it functioned more like USB pen drives, and maybe it will in the
future.

As for my situation, I found a tolerable solution, though it's not exactly
what I wanted. I will set up a DevCon job
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q311272) to remove
the hard drive device when the backup successfully completes. If you
disable the hard drive, it remains disabled the next time you insert it, so
you have to remove it. This works since it's pretty much a set time when I
want to switch drives, namely one a week when we swap backup media. Not
what I had hoped for, but it works.

The idea of using SATA drives in the manner described above seems to be
pretty popular. As soon as I find a SATA controller that funtions in that
way I will puchase at least a half a dozen.

Brian Taylor

For email, send to chris at panties domain dot com, Remove panties and replace domain with attbi.

 

[Chris S]

Well, finally some good news to report!

At home, with my Asus P4PE-based system, running windows 2000 pro, and
with Adaptec Silicon-Image chipset SATA card, I AM able to use
'disable' in device manager, and not have to reboot. I tested by
copying files, disabling, powering drive down then up,re-enabling -
all files just written were there - unlike on my work system.

Whether this is due to the motherboard, sata card chipset, or OS, I
don't know. I will perhaps buy another Adaptec SATA card and try it
at work; or temporarily move the adaptec card to my work machine.

Brian - thanks for the link to the 'DevCon' utility; looks very
useful. By the sound of it, it's only doing at the command line
what you can do in the device manager, so I don't think it will help
me.

In my case, I've already tried 'disabling' and/or 'uninstalling' the
drive in device manager. When I do this, though, Windows always wants
to reboot ('your hardware settings have changed ... must reboot ...
want to restart now?'). If I don't reboot, but then power down the
drive (and later re-connect the drive), files copied to the drive are
not there. If I have the drive powered up and connected on startup of
windows, it detects that the drive is 'dirty' and does some recovery,
and I find a 'found' folder on the drive with lots of files in it.

The above applies to my 'work' system, using a maxtor pci card
(promise chipset). I'll try it on my home system (Adaptec pci card,
silicon image chipset).



For email, send to chris at panties domain dot com, Remove panties and replace domain with attbi.

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[Chris S]

Another tidbit:

On the product page for an addonics external drive
http://www.addonics.com/products/combo_hdd/aechdsa35-r.asp
they have this comment and footnote:

"...
Hot swappable (1), hard drive can be removed or add to the system
without restarting*

(1) Serial ATA hot swap feature works only with controllers basing on
Silicon Image chip set from our inhouse testing. Other controllers
that are not Silicon Image based may not support hot swap. ... New
controllers from Intel and other suppliers may finally correct the
problem. ..."

And that's exactly what I've found ... using my Silicon Image-based
Adaptec SATA card, I can hot swap; using my promise-based Maxtor SATA
card, I cannot. Postings here also confirm that some intel chipsets
support hot swap now too.

I'll continue testing and researching this.

Well, finally some good news to report!

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[Nathan McNulty]

Thanks for the update

Another great thing is that ALL of the SATA300 PCI-E cards I have seen
all support hot swap fully. Hopefully this time around they won't have
some that partly work, or don't support it at all.

 

[Chris S]

Another tidbit I found ... From Silicon Image's website:

Here's the url, but it didn't work when I re-tested it just now:
http://12.24.47.40/display/2/kb/article.asp?aid=10744

So this is further confirmation that you must disable the drive before
removing.

(extract follows):
======================
SATA: Hot Plugging Drives Under Windows 2000/XP
This feature is not explicitly highlighted in our current drivers, but
all SATA controllers from Silicon Image do support hot plug
capability. To remove a drive from a powered up system, do the
following:

Enter the Windows Device Manager (through Control Panel or right
clicking on My Computer and going to Properties)
Go to Disk Drives and find the disk you want to remove
Right click on the desired disk drive and select Remove/Disable
After performing this operation, you can remove the hard drive without
risk of losing any data that is currently stored in cache memory.

To plug in a new SATA drive in the array, you just need to plug in the
power and serial cables and Windows will automatically detect the new
HD. NOTE: If you are re-attaching a drive after a remove operation as
explained above, you must make sure that the HD is power cycled (power
cable unplugged) before re-attaching the HD serial data cable.
================= (End extract).

Thanks for the update

Another great thing is that ALL of the SATA300 PCI-E cards I have seen
all support hot swap fully. Hopefully this time around they won't have
some that partly work, or don't support it at all.

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