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I have a SATA hard drive that says it supports hot-plugging. Does that mean I can actually connect it to power and a SATA plug while my computer is running? Would be handy, but seems kind of scary...
Hardware details:
- Motherboard: Gigabyte, GA-MA790X-UD3P
- Hard drive: Western Digital, WD10EADS-00L5B1
Or might have been a different hard drive I read was hotpluggable... either way I'm more curious about the theory of it all rather than my specific case :p
if you have more detail let me know and i'll edit answer – RobotHumans – 2010-12-11T21:51:02.287
I'm not sure it's something I'd try even if everything said it was OK. – ChrisF – 2010-12-11T22:27:54.297
@ChrisF: That's what I'm thinking too :p – Svish – 2010-12-11T22:59:59.387
There are three things for this to work correctly. (1) It must be supported by the drive, controller/mobo, and software (not everyone sticks to the full text of a standard). (2) Plug in the power to the drive before plugging in the data cable (may not be required, but it’s best to have the drive ready when the OS tries to read it—not an issue with SSDs, but still a good idea). (3) Configure the drive (Device Manager) for quick-removal instead of performance or(/and) use the Eject/Safely Remove function to flush the cache to avoid corruption (i.e., turn it into a flash drive). – Synetech – 2012-10-12T20:15:52.320
If you're gonna be doing this often, a hotswap rack is a convenient way of doing it. I don't know if it connects/disconnects the power/data cables in a specific order, but they're designed specifically for this purpose and will prevent the connectors on the HDD from wearing out. – Lèse majesté – 2013-08-10T04:08:39.157
Also, if you can't find SATA drives in "Safely Remove Hardware" in XP, you can use Hotswap!, which puts a new icon in your systray and will let you hotswap SATA drives just fine. Just make sure your BIOS supports it and install the latest motherboard drivers in case you're still using the old Intel ICH7 drivers that weren't hotswap ready.
– Lèse majesté – 2013-08-10T04:12:59.290