Is SATA hard drive hot swappable?

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I have a WinXP SP3 with one IDE (Drive C: and D:) and one 650MB SATA (Drive F:, G: and H:). Drive E: is DVD/CR Drive.

I just purchased a 2TB SATA Hard drive and connected it to one of the SATA ports on the mother board. When I unplugged the power of 2TB SATA, it would disappear from My Computer. However, when I plugged in the power again, it would not show up in My Computer. Refreshing and rescanning in the Disk Management did not help.

How to make this 2TB SATA HD be hot swappable?

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How to make this 2TB SATA HD be hot swappable?

Put it into an external case and connect it via the USB port? USB is plug and play…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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Put it into an external case and connect it via the USB port? USB is plug and play…

Hi BATcher,

Thanks for your comment.

This 2TB SATA HD is for intensive large files storage. External USB enclosure is too slow for the work.

I searched on the internet and found people suggested enabling the AHCI in the BIOS. Unfortunately, it requires the reinstallation of Windows.

HotSwap may be is another way to enable the hot swap capability of SATA drive. I have not tried it yet.

I found myself a way to hot swap SATA drive. It is not as easy as using the USB enclosure. But, it works for me. The basic theory is to use the Device Manager, not Disk Manager, in the Control Panel to manage the hot swap.

If I want to disconnect the 2TB from the system, I need to disable it from the Device Manager first before unplug the power or cable from the back of the hard drive.

When I want to put the 2TB back to the system, just plug in the power and cable and do the Scan for Hardware Changes under the Action menu in Device Manager. Then enable this hard drive. 2TB will show up in My Computer.

Yes, I can disconnect the power and cable from the back without disabling the device first. But, to prevent accidentally disconnect the hard drive while it is doing the data transfer, I would add the disable procedure as safety measure.

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You’ve got further than I thought was possible! Hot-plug disk drives on servers require a well-planned way of ensuring that when pulled or inserted, the correct sets of pins break (or make) contact at the correct time, measured in milliseconds.

I agree with you about large USB2 external hard drives having a very depressing data transfer rate. The sooner USB3 comes, the better.

Have you thought about a NAS device, which as a Linux computer driving the hard disk could sit on Gigabit ethernet segment? I have a nice Buffalo 1.5 TB LinkStation Pro NAS.

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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USB2 is not fast enough, but if your computer supports eSATA then this runs at a decent speed.

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USB2 is not fast enough, but if your computer supports eSATA then this runs at a decent speed.

Hi Stuart,

Before I posted this topic, I did try to use a 2.5″/3.5″ SATA to USB 2.0/eSATA Dual Bay Hard Drive Dock. For unknown reasons, my PC had difficulty in recognizing the inserted hard drive in either eSATA or USB connection. I thought it was an isolated problem caused by my PC. So I moved the dock station to another Vista PC. Same problem!

Since one side of my PC case is always open, I have been able to connect the 2TB directly to the mother board SATA port and disconnect/connect the cable conveniently.

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Hi BATcher,

Though my PC is Gigabit Ethernet enabled, the router is not. I need to get a Gibabit router to use the NAS devices. But, if I am correct, the speed of Gigabit NAS is in the same range of USB 2.0, 100MB to 1000MB.

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Hi BATcher,

Though my PC is Gigabit Ethernet enabled, the router is not. I need to get a Gibabit router to use the NAS devices. But, if I am correct, the speed of Gigabit NAS is in the same range of USB 2.0, 100MB to 1000MB.

USB-2 is supposed to run at a nominal 480 Mbps (~60 MBps), Gigabit ethernet at a nominal 1000 Mbps (~125 MBps).
I’ve seen suggestions that USB-2 can reach a maximum of 40 MBps, because of the usual ‘overheads’.
I suspect that the data transfer rate of the hard drive would, in most cases, be the limiting factor on a Gigabit network.

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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Hi BATcher,

Thanks for your comment.

This 2TB SATA HD is for intensive large files storage. External USB enclosure is too slow for the work.

I searched on the internet and found people suggested enabling the AHCI in the BIOS. Unfortunately, it requires the reinstallation of Windows.

HotSwap may be is another way to enable the hot swap capability of SATA drive. I have not tried it yet.

I found myself a way to hot swap SATA drive. It is not as easy as using the USB enclosure. But, it works for me. The basic theory is to use the Device Manager, not Disk Manager, in the Control Panel to manage the hot swap.

If I want to disconnect the 2TB from the system, I need to disable it from the Device Manager first before unplug the power or cable from the back of the hard drive.

When I want to put the 2TB back to the system, just plug in the power and cable and do the Scan for Hardware Changes under the Action menu in Device Manager. Then enable this hard drive. 2TB will show up in My Computer.

Yes, I can disconnect the power and cable from the back without disabling the device first. But, to prevent accidentally disconnect the hard drive while it is doing the data transfer, I would add the disable procedure as safety measure.

I agree with comments from StuartR and BATcher and I looked at your link (good info I will use and pass on – thanks).

FWIW, Having said that, about three months ago I installed a SATA drive via eSATA enclosure to eSATA port on a computer. The bios allowed me to activate and I was able to hotswap the drive out with another – also in an eSATA enclosure.

As long as the motherboard supports the function – you can hotswap the SATA drive.

BTB-The motherboard in the computer mentioned was a ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe

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