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SATA and Hot Swap (More info)
I found this discussion very interesting as I am wanting to be able to
hot swap some drives myself. What is the symptom when one swaps a drive in or out that is not "hot swap capable"? Is the drive merely not recognized, or can hardware damage occur? Thanks, -- Charlie C. To email me, eradicate obfuscate & remove dot invalid |
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SATA and Hot Swap (More info)
CSquared wrote:
I found this discussion very interesting as I am wanting to be able to hot swap some drives myself. What is the symptom when one swaps a drive in or out that is not "hot swap capable"? Is the drive merely not recognized, or can hardware damage occur? Thanks, -- Charlie C. To email me, eradicate obfuscate & remove dot invalid It sounds like Carl has done more experiments with this than I have. If the hot swap is not working, then you wouldn't expect the system to see the disk at all. The event from the hardware, would not be raised to the software (because either the path is missing inside the driver code, or the OS itself doesn't support drives appearing out of nowhere). The SATA connectors are designed with hot swap in mind, and even if the driver code was missing, there should be no damage to the drive. If you look at the SATA cable, certain pins are longer than the other pins. Those pins touch first, and prevent negative voltages appearing on the sensitive data pins. If you look at the instructions for one of those SATA to USB converters, they suggest a certain order if connecting cables to a cold drive. Connect the 15 pin SATA power wafer first. Then connect the data cable second. When you think about it, you should be connecting your cables, to minimize vibration to a running drive, so one end of the data cable can be fastened to the drive first, then the power cable gets connected, and then the other end of the data cable goes to the motherboard. When you're finished with the drive later, and you want the OS to keep running, first you use the "Safely remove" icon in the tray, to flush the cache on the drive. Then, you'd unplug the data cable from the motherboard connector. (That way, there is no mechanical shock to the still-powered drive.) Next, disconnect the power to the drive, preferably by disconnecting an adapter cable from the power supply - not by yanking on a connector right on the drive. So when you're finished, you have a drive in your hands, with a power and a data cable still in place, but the other ends have been disconnected in a particular order. Once the drive spins down (give it 30 seconds or more), it is more resistance to shock, so you can carefully remove the cables from the drive. It is sorta like car batteries, when you give you buddy's car a boost. There is a certain order to connect the cables there as well, for safety reasons. HTH, Paul |
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SATA and Hot Swap (More info)
"Paul" wrote in message
... CSquared wrote: I found this discussion very interesting as I am wanting to be able to hot swap some drives myself. What is the symptom when one swaps a drive in or out that is not "hot swap capable"? Is the drive merely not recognized, or can hardware damage occur? Thanks, -- Charlie C. To email me, eradicate obfuscate & remove dot invalid It sounds like Carl has done more experiments with this than I have. If the hot swap is not working, then you wouldn't expect the system to see the disk at all. The event from the hardware, would not be raised to the software (because either the path is missing inside the driver code, or the OS itself doesn't support drives appearing out of nowhere). The SATA connectors are designed with hot swap in mind, and even if the driver code was missing, there should be no damage to the drive. If you look at the SATA cable, certain pins are longer than the other pins. Those pins touch first, and prevent negative voltages appearing on the sensitive data pins. Both of the above paragraphs are pretty much what I would have expected. I really had not done my homework on this issue and probably should not have posted regarding it at all yet, but I figured what the heck - it was the first work day of the new year. Also, it is a subject in which I have more than passing interest. If you look at the instructions for one of those SATA to USB converters, they suggest a certain order if connecting cables to a cold drive. Connect the 15 pin SATA power wafer first. Then connect the data cable second. When you think about it, you should be connecting your cables, to minimize vibration to a running drive, so one end of the data cable can be fastened to the drive first, then the power cable gets connected, and then the other end of the data cable goes to the motherboard. When you're finished with the drive later, and you want the OS to keep running, first you use the "Safely remove" icon in the tray, to flush the cache on the drive. Then, you'd unplug the data cable from the motherboard connector. (That way, there is no mechanical shock to the still-powered drive.) Next, disconnect the power to the drive, preferably by disconnecting an adapter cable from the power supply - not by yanking on a connector right on the drive. So when you're finished, you have a drive in your hands, with a power and a data cable still in place, but the other ends have been disconnected in a particular order. Once the drive spins down (give it 30 seconds or more), it is more resistance to shock, so you can carefully remove the cables from the drive. It is sorta like car batteries, when you give you buddy's car a boost. There is a certain order to connect the cables there as well, for safety reasons. That makes perfect sense to me. My current vision for using a removable drive is primarily as a mostly-non-spinning alternate backup for .jpg files I've saved from my camera. (I'm a firm believer in multiple - like 3 or more - backups for irreplaceable things like digital pictures. And yes, I have multiple CDs burned at intervals, but I'd still like to have them on a different medium as well.) In that scenario, I would probably just leave the power and data cables connected to the external drive essentially all the time. I can just hear someone say "Yeah, but what happens when you fill that drive up and need 2 or more drives?" I'll grant everyone ahead of time that is a real possibility. I suppose an extra set of cables for each external drive would not add all that much more cost though. I was actually thinking more in terms of the hot-swap trays one can mount in a drive bay, since I always tend to over-build in the area of the PC case and have lots of spare empty drive bays as a result. I did today finally do a bit of homework and found quite a few of these at my favorite internet vendor (Newegg - no affiliation, just a happy customer) in the $25 to $35 US range. Several mention being "master/slave free" which I'll admit I had not thought about. In any case, thanks much for your comments. Charlie C. HTH, Paul |
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