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ESATA Hot Swap

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AdioKIP   07-27-2009 at 11:35:50 PM

The last time I rebuilt my system I switched my sata hard drives over to AHCI mode because I heard this would make my External SATA drive hot swappable. My question is how do I swap it. I have a 1 TB that I leave connected thru ESATA. I would like to be able to swap this out with a 500gb occasionally for when I want to run a backup as SATA is much faster then USB. When I click on the drive (or right click) in explorer there are no options to disconnect the drive. When I pull up the windows disconnect utility the drive isnt listed. Is there a way to shut the drive down, cut off my ESATA external adaptor, plug in the other drive, turn on the adaptor and have the drive come up all without rebooting? What is the correct method for hot swapping an ESATA drive?

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Bronze Storage badge r_manic   07-29-2009 at 05:09:11 AM
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Can ESATA hot-plug???

Quote :

Hot-swap functionality is dependent on the SATA driver for the controller in question. One would think that if a manufacturer implements eSATA compliance in their controller, that they would also implement hot-swap, but alas that isn't the case.

A prime example is the Intel ICH8R/9R south bridge. It is eSATA compliant, and in fact if you purchase an Intel motherboard, it even comes with a bracket that allows one of the internal SATA ports to become an eSATA port, so you can plug in an eSATA device. Of course, in Intel's infinite wisdom, they did not implement hot-swap in the ICH driver, so there is no Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray to allow you to actually hot swap the drive.

------------------------------ Desktop | E7300 | P5KPL-AM | 2GB DDR2 667MHz | NVIDIA 9500 GT | ST3320613AS | w2228h
XPS M1330 | T8300 | Dell 0U8042 | 2GB DDR2 800MHz | NVIDIA 8400M GS | WD2500BEVS-75US | 1280 x 800
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AdioKIP   07-29-2009 at 02:09:05 PM
- 0 +

All the information that I have read says that when running in AHCI mode that an ESATA drive should be able to hot-swap....but nowhere ever says how. Maybe its like the quote you listed where its available in "Theory" but not actually implemented.


Message edited by AdioKIP on 07-29-2009 at 02:10:38 PM
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