Swappable Drive Bay

[Tot118]

Hello-

I tried searching the forums but couldn't really find a answer for this specific question. I just recently purchased a Gateway FX6831-01 and was using the swap bay on the tower. I've never used anything like it before, so I just wanted to double check with people that use or even have this tower as well.

I got it to read the new hard drive in the bay no problem, but I was wondering, is it okay to keep the hard drive in the bay? I heard the hard drive in the bay shutting down while my tower was still on, it could still read it but had to reload the stuff. After that I decided to pop out the drive and it was very warm to the touch, so I kept it out. I've never felt a hard drive after use so I don't know if that's normal or not, but it kind of worried me. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Hello-

After that I decided to pop out the drive and it was very warm to the touch, so I kept it out. I've never felt a hard drive after use so I don't know if that's normal or not, but it kind of worried me. Thanks in advance for any help.

Hard drives get warm; don't sweat it. The OS may stop the hard drive spinning if it has not been used for a while, to save power. If you access it after that, it will spin back up. Again, no problem.

But: do not remove the hard drive without "ejecting" it first. Windows caches write data, and it is theoretically possible to trash data on the drive by removing it before the cache is flushed. You need to use Windows's "Safely remove hardware" feature (if you are running Windows, that is). What OS are you running? If you know how to eject a USB drive, use the same procedure. If you don't, ask here.

It is always safe to remove the drive when the system is shut down. If you put the drive in before booting the system, in some versions of the OS you must shut down the system to remove it again.

Whoops - I missed a question. Yes, it's OK to leave the drive in the bay all the time. Most people leave all their drives in all the time, since they don't use removables, and the drives last for years. But don't count on the latter; do backups. You've got the perfect setup for it - buy another drive, pop it in the bay, back up to it, shut it down, take it out, and store it somewhere else.

 

[Tot118]

Using Windows 7, and yes, familiar with the eject but it doesn't display it in the task bar. It just shows up in the "My Computer" folder as Local Disk (E). And have to shut down before popping it in or else it won' t recognize it (also I power down before removing). Was just afraid with how warm it got, that it would cause it to die faster.

Thank you very much for the help.