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I have a hyperv 2012 r2 server, and the case has two bays where you can open a drawer and slide in a bare SATA drive. Theres a data and power connector at the back of the bay with cables to connect to sata card or motherboard inside the case, as well as power from the power supply.

I'm pretty sure SATA is hot pluggable so I can insert the drive with the system running. My question is how do I safely remove the drive? I assume hardware wise this is part of being hot swappable, but how will Windows respond and how can I be sure nothing is in cache waiting to be written?

I'm hoping to be able to swap drives so the SBS 2011 guest VM can use the drives for backup.

The Mb is an Asus kgpe-d16, the drive bays are called xdock bays as part of a cooler master cosmos 2 case. The drives I am planning on using are wd 2tb red naps.

The manual for the Mb and raid controller both say they support hot swap, so my question is mainly how do I ensure windows is no longer using the drive, similar to the safely remove hardware icon you'd have in a full windows install.

Andy
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  • Hot swap drives are usually intended for usage in hardware RAID arrays. Replacing a disk does not interrupt the operating system. – Zoredache Mar 13 '14 at 22:35
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    This is a hardware question, your tags describe the software. – ETL Mar 13 '14 at 22:36
  • @ETL sata and hotswap are hardware id think. – Andy Mar 13 '14 at 23:11
  • @Zoredache Are you saying that's the normal case, or that i can't hot swap a single drive? – Andy Mar 13 '14 at 23:23
  • @Rex Apart from the case, how is this desktop class hardware ? – Lawrence Mar 14 '14 at 07:52
  • @Rex, an Asus kgpe-d16 is one hell of a desktop-class MB. – quadruplebucky Mar 14 '14 at 09:48
  • OK, the important part of the hardware (the part that generally determines if this is possible or not) would be your disk controller/RAID card... what is it? – HopelessN00b Mar 14 '14 at 14:17
  • @HopelessN00b The drives in the XDock which I'm asking about are currently connected to the SATA connectors on the MB. I could connect them to the RAID controller as an independent drive if that would enable what I'm looking for. The RAID controller is an Adaptec 6805 http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/raid/sas_raid/sas-6805/ – Andy Mar 14 '14 at 17:29

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As long as the drive isn't part of an active RAID array, not in RAID 0, and not being accessed at the time, you should be able to replace failed drives no problem. SATA is hot-pluggable and hot-swappable.

Are you using a hardware RAID controller, or the fake RAID built-in to some motherboards?

lmaverickbna
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  • The drive in the xdock will be a single, stand alone drive to backup to. The server does have an Adaptec 6805 controller, but the drives in that cards array will not be swapped unless one fails. – Andy Mar 14 '14 at 01:28
  • Also, its the "not being accessed at the time". Since 'tis is server core theres no safely remove device icon to use. – Andy Mar 14 '14 at 01:30
  • Are you able to access Disk Management via MMC? Or has that functionality been removed? – lmaverickbna Mar 14 '14 at 21:18
  • Its server core so no access to mmc – Andy Mar 14 '14 at 21:27
  • [TechNet](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee441255(v=ws.10).aspx) This might be helpful - it appears that you can access a Server Core machine using the MMC on a local Windows workstation. MMC has the capability to connect to remote machines. – lmaverickbna Mar 15 '14 at 00:12
  • Yes, but disk management doesn't seem to have a way to safely disconnect the drive. – Andy Mar 15 '14 at 01:44
  • Are the disks in question attached to the RAID controller? If so, look into the Adaptec software from their website. If not, just go ahead and pull the drive. – lmaverickbna Mar 15 '14 at 02:13
  • No they are currently attached to the Mb. – Andy Mar 16 '14 at 01:44
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You should probably have a look at the SBSbackup HCL (apparently compiled by some forum enthusiasts, not MSFT) if you're going to depend on something like this:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1780.windows-small-business-server-external-backup-drives-compatibility-list.aspx

WRT to the "x-dock" in your coolermaster, it's easy to hook them up backwards and fry things, and that's defnitely not server-class.

quadruplebucky
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  • The Xdock has SATA and power cables already connected, so it was just a matter of plugging it into the MB (SATA and the older style power connectors are both keyed); the server can read the drives so everything seems to work.. but I guess you're suggesting my plan would not be a good idea. FYI the drives for backup are these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2W01AZ5009 Not desktop but not at the Black level of drives either I guess. – Andy Mar 14 '14 at 13:25
  • Also the reason I'm asking this is that either those drives don't work in a simple RAID1 enclosure I already have, or the enclosure has failed, I haven't determined. Was just seeing about this for an alternative. This is for my small business, so I can't quite afford full blown enterprise grade everything. – Andy Mar 14 '14 at 13:26