Sparda Posted June 22, 2006 Share Posted June 22, 2006 I noticed that my SATA drive is listed in "Safley Remove Hardware", this doesn't bother me (why should it?), and is, apparently, becasue the SATA specification says that all SATA hard drives are hotswapable and so all SATA cards and motherboards with SATA adapters should support it (Is this true?), but on my last motherboard my SATA drive was not listed as removable. So errrm... whats happening with this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duelus Posted June 22, 2006 Share Posted June 22, 2006 Yes, They are. But I wouldn't suggest removing or adding a drive while the machine is running, unless you can get all 4 molex pins to go in at the same time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr Zaius Posted June 22, 2006 Share Posted June 22, 2006 As far as I know the SATA standard has always supported hot-swapping drives. Although the standard supports it there may be several SATA drives/controllers that don't support it or have problems in implementing it and may need newer drivers. All of the SATA drives/controllers I've owned have always supported hot-swapping. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted June 22, 2006 Share Posted June 22, 2006 Yes, They are.But I wouldn't suggest removing or adding a drive while the machine is running, unless you can get all 4 molex pins to go in at the same time. What 4 molex pins? If you're using the SATA data and power connectors there are no '4 molex pins'. What you do get are 2 connectors where the ground 'pins' (find an image of the inside of the connector to see what I mean) are longer than the other pins. So when the data or power lines have already been severed, there's still ground to prevent some electrical issues that are way over my head to comprehend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duelus Posted June 22, 2006 Share Posted June 22, 2006 Cooper, but some SATA drives do have a place to connect a Molex cable for power. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingwray Posted June 22, 2006 Share Posted June 22, 2006 If you having to use the molex version then you can buy molex switches which plug into the drive then the cable and give you a switch for the power. That way you don't have to worry about pulling them apart or together. Other than that you could always buy a hotswap bay which will easily allow you to remove your harddrive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted June 22, 2006 Author Share Posted June 22, 2006 I personaly don't have the need to hotswap a hard drive. In the past I was anoyed when I had to turn my computer off to make hardware changes to PCI slots or IDE drives. This fustration how ever has been removed since I have aquiered more computers. One more question I do have though is this: If a hard drive in a RAID 1 array dies and you hotswap the faulty hard drive, how do you go about repopulating the drive with out using your RAID controler software (i.e. that peice of software you had ot use to set up the RAID in the first place, most likly programed in Asembler).? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingwray Posted June 22, 2006 Share Posted June 22, 2006 If you are using a hardware raid solution then it should be available to access in the bios before your computer boots, and there should be a option to rebuild broken arrays, in all likely events it would probably tell you what you need to so. If you are using a software raid solution then you will need to boot into windows and use the software the you made the array with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted June 22, 2006 Author Share Posted June 22, 2006 No, you miss understand me, I'm talking about repopulating a broken hard drive with out reboots. Thats the idea of hot swapping, replacing broken hard drives with out restarting the computer. I suppose it is upto the RAID array controlers manurfacturer to provide you with software that allows you to repopulate a RAID array without restarting your computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingwray Posted June 22, 2006 Share Posted June 22, 2006 Most raid cards that are featured on motherboards require a reboot to rebuild if they are hardware, otherwise its in software. In which case you haven't got Windows etc. on the array because its impossible. You usually have to pay a lot for being able to rebuild a raid array without rebooting because they like to charge extra for it. Personally I wouldn't like to rebuild an array while still in use ever if I had to, its far more likely to fail if you do so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowy© Posted June 23, 2006 Share Posted June 23, 2006 Personally I wouldn't like to rebuild an array while still in use ever if I had to, its far more likely to fail if you do so. I always thought it was parity based and the Array had to be the same as the one from the time the drive died... time to go read more me thinks thanks stringwray :) Edit couldn't you just start writing after the last data point from when the drive died and blahblahblah wow that would be a lot of redirects - compare the modified stamps and only read the latest one maybe and cloan any file changed hmmm reading I shall go Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingwray Posted June 23, 2006 Share Posted June 23, 2006 I always thought it was parity based and the Array had to be the same as the one from the time the drive died... time to go read more me thinks thanks stringwray SmileEdit couldn't you just start writing after the last data point from when the drive died and blahblahblah wow that would be a lot of redirects - compare the modified stamps and only read the latest one maybe and cloan any file changed hmmm reading I shall go Not all Raid arrays are parity, and Toms Hardware did a long piece on the reliability of arrays under different circumstances and the probabilities of having a more drives fail at different times of before, during and after rebuilding. Some arrays allow you to continue using them with one drive down with limited performance, so this would be changing the data on the array. Then when you add the replacement hard drive the whole array has to be rebuilt again generally. Put it this way, its like burning a dvd/cd, if you do something resource intensive while burning you are far more likely to make a coaster than if you turn everything off that you are running and don't use your computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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