Am I SOL on hot swapping SATA drives on ICH9R controller?

[her209]

I bought an Antec Easy SATA. I recently reinstalled my computer with Windows XP Pro SP3 using the AHCI controller driver. But I don't have the option to remove the SATA drive that is in the Antec unit. In fact, the Safely Remove Hardware (green arrow icon) doesn't even show up.

Am I SOL?

 

[her209]

I forgot to mention that my motherboard has a dedicated slot for eSATA but the Antec unit is connected to a "regular" SATA port on the motherboard.

 

[ViviTheMage]

You want to hot swap the OS drive..that's impossible with a single disk configuration. More info!

 

[her209]

You want to hot swap the OS drive..that's impossible with a single disk configuration. More info!

No, I have the Antec unit to connect and disconnect secondary SATA drives. The OS is installed on a different drive.

 

[RebateMonger]

So what happens when you connect/disconnect the drive while Windows is running?

Personally, I don't use AHCI. Rather, I use PCI / PCI-E SATA disk controller cards running Silicon Image disk controllers and their drivers. These hot-swap perfectly, but don't give a "Safely Remove Disk" option. I just pull them after I'm sure the writes are done.

I'm not suggesting that you follow this option. I'm just wondering if Windows freezes when you add or remove disks. If hot-swap is working, then Windows won't freeze and the disk be addeded or removed, as appropriate, from Explorer and Disk Management. If hot-swap isn't working....you'll know it. The disk won't appear, and if it's already installed it'll likely freeze Windows when the drive is disconnected.

 

[Glenn]

I've used Gigabyte boards with ICH9r controllers with ahci enabled in bios and XP pro many times in the past. I keep empty drive caddies on the front of my tower to hot plug drives out of other systems for imaging, cleaning, etc... I've never bothered to "safely remove hardware" and haven't had any problems to date. I currently am using a newer board and Win 7 but I had a series of ICH9r boards with XP doing the same thing a few years back.

 

[Vincent]

Try going into device manager to uninstall the drive. I don't have the safely remove hardware icon either. So I remove it through the device manager.

 

[her209]

Hmmm... the first time I tried this, I used an unused 80GB drive to plug in and Windows did nothing. I used it in case it fried my drive, I wouldn't lose anything important. The drive had a partition with some files, but Windows didn't detect it until I rebooted the computer. I waited 5-10 minutes before rebooting.

However, with a 1TB drive in the Antec unit, I just removed the drive and Windows doesn't detect that I removed the drive until I do a Rescan Disks in Disk Management or a Scan for Plug and Play Devices in the Intel Matrix Storage Console (MSC). When I plug the drive back in, the MSC automatically detects that a drive was plugged in after 30 seconds or so.

Weird. Thanks guys.

EDIT: I should mention that I did perfom a Rescan Disks and Scan for Plug and Play Devices on the 80GB prior to rebooting the system.

 

[Auric]

The drive should be automatically detected after only a few seconds when using the Intel driver. The Microsoft driver will not do so and requires initiating a scan manually (it does present safe removal though).

The application HotSwap! allows manual scanning from the tray and also safe removal with spin-down so it good for either driver. It works with Intel and Silicon Image controllers, at least.

http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

 

[Sahakiel]

nvm

 

[RebateMonger]

As I noted, I do NOT use AHCI. But with Silicon Image SATA disk controller drivers, both Windows Exporer and Disk Management "immediately" sense the addition and removal of a hot-swapped disk attached to the Silicon Image controller. I don't have to rescan. There's no "Safely Remove" option at all, though. All this is while Windows (XP or higher) is running.

Again, this is NOT with AHCI drivers installed. I'm noting it to illustrate what "normal" SATA hot-swap operation would look like.

 

[her209]

The application HotSwap! allows manual scanning from the tray and also safe removal with spin-down so it good for either driver. It works with Intel and Silicon Image controllers, at least.

http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

WOW. Fucking sweet.