I finally found out for Hot Swap SATA Drives to be recognized by the computer, you have to do a manual rescan of the drives in Disk Manager. Learning this, I note I rarely can unplug an external USB drive using the "Safe to Disconnect" program. The drive is always busy even when its not. But the question I have is how can hot swap guarantee that no data will be lost if you hot swap while the drive is writing? Assuming "you just don't do that" how come you can't just assure yourself the USB drive has been idle for 8 hours and go ahead and disconnect it even though the Safely Disconnect Hard Drive program says it is busy? Thanks.
Why doesn't USB work like Hot Swap?
- Thread starter bobbo123
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t53186
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- Aug 6, 2006
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First a little background information regarding hot swap. Typically a hot swap drive is part of a raid array which is controlled by a raid controller, which is usually a separate add on card. The raid controller can either mark the drive as failed or you can manually make the drive offline for removal. Hot swap drive means it can be removed while power is still applied to the drive, of course the drive cannot be in use when removing the drive or data will be lost.
Could you please advise what OS you are using and what the drive is being used for.
Could you please advise what OS you are using and what the drive is being used for.
Win 7 Ultimate, SP1, 64 bit, the drive(S) are being used to store video, spreadsheets, and word documents. They are NOT in raid all just a bunch of drives.
The issue more narrowly is I understand how Hot Swap could/should work but in essence the sata drive is just stopped without any shutdown process and there are no warnings about data loss or corruption. But, do the same thing with a USB drive and there are strong warning about not just disconnecting a drive by pulling the power cable for instance. The two processes seem the same to me: power is disconnected from the drive. Why the warning for USB and not for Hot Swap?
The issue more narrowly is I understand how Hot Swap could/should work but in essence the sata drive is just stopped without any shutdown process and there are no warnings about data loss or corruption. But, do the same thing with a USB drive and there are strong warning about not just disconnecting a drive by pulling the power cable for instance. The two processes seem the same to me: power is disconnected from the drive. Why the warning for USB and not for Hot Swap?
I know "what" to do. I am curious why the USB has warnings about simply disconnecting it while there are no warnings and implied no issues when doing the same thing with a Hot Swap drive. Incidentally....before I learned about the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" program for USB's, I regularly disconnected the power cable, leaving the data cable attached, and I never noticed anything happening as a result of this. I still do this for the USB memory sticks. so...why all the warnings? Why not just say "If you disconnect the USB drive while it is busy at some task, you may lose data?" ((IE: exactly like what I assume happens if you hot swap: but there is no program to safely remove Hot Swap hardware nor about losing data. Why?))
t53186
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A usb drive does not have a seperate controller capable of managing a hot swap drive. As I mentioned, typically hot swap drive are in a raid array. If a drive is part of a raid array it can be removed , but if it is the chances are less likely data will be lost, the array may need to be rebuilt automatically but no loss. Just because a drive is considered hot swap does not mean it can be removed without data loss. A warning message is not displayed for for hot swap drives either in a raid or not because they are not intended to be "removable" devices such as USB drives.
Thanks t5. My experience is that hot swap cages ARE sold as an easy way to make sata drives removable. That might be loose marketing and that "everyone knows" hot swap is "supposed to be used" just for raid? My Rosewill Stealth Black Case has a single hot swap sata bay.......I don't see how it would be expected to work only with a RAID hard Drive array? Still, I went another route and found a good explanation here:
https://superuser.com/questions/925847/desmistifiying-sata-hotplug
My takeaway unless you correct me is that "basically" hot swap and USB do work basically the same with "controllers" allowing for proper shut down. The concern is that hot swap in non-raid systems are not well documented/advertised to the public to go into the bios and/or to check the write down status of the sata drive before using the hot swap technique.
That makes sense.......lots of "assumptions" when experts give advice/sell their products to the public.
I love the convenience of being able to swap multiple drives without interrupting my work. I will look more into those bios commands as discussed at the link...and be sure there has been no activity on the sata drives for 5-10 minutes before swapping them.
................wish me luck.
https://superuser.com/questions/925847/desmistifiying-sata-hotplug
My takeaway unless you correct me is that "basically" hot swap and USB do work basically the same with "controllers" allowing for proper shut down. The concern is that hot swap in non-raid systems are not well documented/advertised to the public to go into the bios and/or to check the write down status of the sata drive before using the hot swap technique.
That makes sense.......lots of "assumptions" when experts give advice/sell their products to the public.
I love the convenience of being able to swap multiple drives without interrupting my work. I will look more into those bios commands as discussed at the link...and be sure there has been no activity on the sata drives for 5-10 minutes before swapping them.
................wish me luck.
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