AHCI and hotswapping

[raptonx]

I have read that AHCI mode is supposed to allow hot swapping, my board using the Marvell 6G having two ports, one of which I connected to a eSATA adapter. A friend of mine said that its not generally a good idea to hotswap anything like that, but I did notice the external drive was listed as a drive that can be unplugged in the task bar. I just don't want to end up damaging the controllers on the board.

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Asus p7F7 Supercomputer with Xeon X3450 2.66 Ghz (bios revision 602)
8 GB of Kingston 1333 ECC
ATI Radeon 4850 HD

138 GB WD Hard drive (OS, partitioned to 7 and XP)
650 GB Hitachi (Data) (
Some Sony DVD/CD burner

BFG 800 Watt PSU

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[jaquith]

If you have AHCI enabled you'll be fine to remove & insert a HDD/SSD. Where the 'damage' can take place is by jarring the spinning HDD. I't best to have a case with the quick releases and allow the HDD to spin-down prior to moving it. Otherwise the head bounces off the platter which isn't good.

 

[raptonx]

If you have AHCI enabled you'll be fine to remove & insert a HDD/SSD. Where the 'damage' can take place is by jarring the spinning HDD. I't best to have a case with the quick releases and allow the HDD to spin-down prior to moving it. Otherwise the head bounces off the platter which isn't good.

Ah, well the external is resting in a safe place, only thing that would be happening is being turned on and off when not in use.

 

[jaquith]

Should be fine, as long as the eSATA port is indeed AHCI. However, you can have all sorts of 'fun' things if other Apps or whatever is trying to access or something is open.

The only time 'I' use hot-swap is for RAID drives and ONLY if it is a 'parity' RAID for the explicit purpose of replacing a dead HDD; in my case SAS drives and at my house with Windows Home Server w/RAID.

I'd allow HDDs to power down after 20 minutes, or use whatever power management options you have available if that's the concern.