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I have a corsair obsidian 650d case which supports the connection of SATA disks from outside of the case. Is it safe to connect or disconenct the disk when computer is running?
I know some motherboards support hot swappable sata disks, but I can not find it in my motherboard manual. My motherboard is a Asus P8P67 v3.1
relaxxx
Posted 2011-12-20T12:29:56.797
Reputation: 197
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Hot-plugging is a part of SATA specification. So, it is safe from mechanical/electrical point of view. However, there are two issues:
If your OS considers that external disk to be an internal one, you won't be able to disconnect the disk safely without potentially compromising the filesystem's integrity (on Windows). E.g., disk writes are cached, and cache is not flushed properly before you unplug that disk.
Bare SATA disk outside of your computer's case is more prone to physical abuse, ESD, etc. So you must ensure it's not bumped around, dropped, touched, etc. If you have a static charge on your body, and you touch your hard disk, you could potentially damage or even destroy it. So always at least touch any bare metal part of your computer before you connect/disconnect your hard disk.
haimg
Posted 2011-12-20T12:29:56.797
Reputation: 19 503