are eSata external drives hot swappable

[ymee]

Guys,

I notice some enclosures are now available with eSata ports allowing SATA like speeds rather than slowpoke USB or Firewire. Are these drives hot swappable like the USB versions? I.e. can I have two such enclosures and disconnect one drive and connect the other without having to shutdown and reboot the computer?

 

[unhappy_mage]

Yes, provided you do the "remove hardware safely" step.

 

[ymee]

the drive I have does not show up under the "safely remove hardware" icon in the task bar. The drive is a Vantec external enclosure.

 

[Old Hippie]

Are these drives hot swappable like the USB versions?

It's the SATA ports on the MB that determine hot swap capabilities. No "add/remove icon" in the task bar, no hot swap.

 

[axan]

not true, my esata doesn't show up in safely add/remove hardware tool but it's hot swapable. I can plug it in / disconnect at will. Just got to use some common sense, make sure you don't have any open/active files on that drive when disconnecting.

 

[Menelmarar]

not true, my esata doesn't show up in safely add/remove hardware tool but it's hot swapable. I can plug it in / disconnect at will. Just got to use some common sense, make sure you don't have any open/active files on that drive when disconnecting.

Exactly.

eSATA hotswap function isn't as well implemented as USB currently. I've also noticed, it takes awhile for windows to realize the eSATA drive has been removed, and you often have to try to do something like browse to the drive and let it time out for it to remove it.

When you reconnect it, or a new eSATA device, I have found I often have to go to task manager and hit the button to scan for new devices before it will pick it up.

But yea, no reboot and full speed, and SMART monitoring ability is nice. My drives in the Vantec eSATA/USB enclosure freaking cook at around 54-56C.

 

[Menelmarar]

Guys,

I notice some enclosures are now available with eSata ports allowing SATA like speeds rather than slowpoke USB or Firewire. Are these drives hot swappable like the USB versions? I.e. can I have two such enclosures and disconnect one drive and connect the other without having to shutdown and reboot the computer?

Slowpoke USB? LAWLS

Depends on the drive, the USB2 480mbps = 60MB/s, limit is on the edge as about how fast you can get average transfer rate from a harddrive, and it's way faster than many midrange 120-500gig drives. Some drives may inch out 70MB/s in the outer reaches of their platters, but I don't think the different from USB2 -> eSATA is going to be hugely noticeable.

As a mobile storage, or a backup drive that archives during the night, USB2 is plenty. If it costs more than a few dollars extra for eSATA, probably not worth it.

 

[axan]

But yea, no reboot and full speed, and SMART monitoring ability is nice. My drives in the Vantec eSATA/USB enclosure freaking cook at around 54-56C.

Ouch that's hot, I have antec mx-1 enclosure, I was doing some backups this weekend ( just 10gb of data) I got curious and checked the temps, about half way through the backup the drive was at 39C

 

[ymee]

Slowpoke USB? LAWLS

Depends on the drive, the USB2 480mbps = 60MB/s, limit is on the edge as about how fast you can get average transfer rate from a harddrive, and it's way faster than many midrange 120-500gig drives. Some drives may inch out 70MB/s in the outer reaches of their platters, but I don't think the different from USB2 -> eSATA is going to be hugely noticeable.

As a mobile storage, or a backup drive that archives during the night, USB2 is plenty. If it costs more than a few dollars extra for eSATA, probably not worth it.

It is slow, USB theoretical speeds may be 480mbps but you would be hard pressed to find implementations that actually run at that speed. Also when connecting to a SATA or PATA device protocol conversion, i.e. USB to SATA needs to occur which takes a lot of overhead.

See http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/vantecns3_4 for benchmarks on USB vs eSata.

 

[Old Hippie]

Ouch that's hot, I have antec mx-1 enclosure, I was doing some backups this weekend ( just 10gb of data) I got curious and checked the temps, about half way through the backup the drive was at 39C

You're looking at the difference between a unit with a decent fan, and one without. I like my HDDs @ 40C.

not true, my esata doesn't show up in safely add/remove hardware tool but it's hot swapable. I can plug it in / disconnect at will.

I find that unusual. My AMD/Nvidia and Intel chipsets both see eSATA as a removeable device. Even with an eSATA pcie card installed on my Asus A8N-SLI, it was listed as a removeable device. As a matter of fact, all my SATA drives were seen as removeable when I enabled ACHI on the Nvidia chipsets.

 

[Old Hippie]

I found this from someone much more knowledgeable than I;

Vanilla ICH7~9 non-R supports AHCI, its just that Intel's Matrix Storage drivers won't support AHCI on the base-ICH chips. If the OS natively supports AHCI, thus not dependent on vendor drivers for it, then all that is needed is for the BIOS to [properly] enable it.

ASUS has opted not to support AHCI on motherboards using base-ICH chips. Gigabyte has opted to support it for operating systems with native AHCI support.

 

[Old Hippie]

When you reconnect it, or a new eSATA device, I have found I often have to go to task manager and hit the button to scan for new devices before it will pick it up.

I guess our interpretations of hot swap are different. I suppose I expect a device, that is introduced after the system has booted, to show me "It's there". I do not expect to have to look for it. I guess that's the way MS expected it to work?

 

[ymee]

I dont have AHCI enabled in my BIOS, that is probably why hotswap is not working and the disk does not show up under Safely Remove Hardware...oh well.

 

[Menelmarar]

I guess our interpretations of hot swap are different. I suppose I expect a device, that is introduced after the system has booted, to show me "It's there". I do not expect to have to look for it.

Hot swapping or hot plugging is the ability to remove and replace components of a machine, usually a computer, while it is operating.

-wikipedia
Which is exactly what I described.

The eSATA connector, USB, Firewire are all designed for this.

IDE, for example, is not. Floppy is not, PS/2 is not, even some oooold boards you could risk damaging the motherboard/devices hot plugging PS/2.

Simiarly, those little USB headers on the motherboard, are probably NOT a good idea to hot swap. May work, but the connectors aren't designed for it so it's feasible that you could cause damage to electronics.

I guess that's the way MS expected it to work?

Microsoft didn't choose to do anything. As far as Windows is concerned, it's an internal regular harddrive SATA port. Windows doesn't know you have the drive on a longer cable outside your chassis. Think through this.

 

[Old Hippie]

Microsoft didn't choose to do anything. As far as Windows is concerned, it's an internal regular harddrive SATA port. Windows doesn't know you have the drive on a longer cable outside your chassis.

So, the little "Remove" icon that pops up is not part of Windows, but a function of the MB?

 

[unhappy_mage]

So, the little "Remove" icon that pops up is not part of Windows, but a function of the MB?

The driver has to tell Windows that the device is hot swappable. The driver is generally provided by the motherboard manufacturer.

 

[Menelmarar]

The driver has to tell Windows that the device is hot swappable. The driver is generally provided by the motherboard manufacturer.

And, I have already lost track of what the OP is talking about. But at least with intel ICH internal SATA ports, even if they are brought to a rear panel eSATA PCI plate that Vantec supplies, the driver and Windows do not know about this, they still assume it's a standard internal hard drive.

 

[ymee]

Again, if your SATA controller allows you to enable AHCI in the BIOS your drive will be hot swappable and will show up in the Safely Remove Devices list.

 

[Menelmarar]

Again, if your SATA controller allows you to enable AHCI in the BIOS your drive will be hot swappable and will show up in the Safely Remove Devices list.

I don't think so. Intel chipsets don't see it this way, AHCI is merely the full featureset of SATA, native command queueing and all that jazz.

 

[<><]

most if not all eSata ports on motherboards aren't on the ICH controller, usually jmicron or such....

AHCI NEEDS to be enabled for hot-swap to function, and as said above, it should be in your bios option for your 2nd controller (either as AHCI or ENHANCED). As for the safely remove hardware list, it depends on how your controller handles that.

just a FYI...if you try to enable ahci on the ICH controller with windows already installed, you will get a BSOD

edit: also you might need to update your drivers for your jmicron or secondary controller on which the esata port resides....

 

[drizzt81]

Slowpoke USB? LAWLS

Depends on the drive, the USB2 480mbps = 60MB/s

The problem is that real-world USB2 block data transfers are slower than this. I admit it has been a while since I last dabbled in this, so my numbers are form 2003: The then de-facto best USB2-HDD controller chipset (Cypress based) was able to get 24MiB/s max. I am aware that this limit has moved upwards quite a bit, but I don't recall seeing any USB benchmarks that show speeds greater than 45MiB/s for block devices. Steaming stuff, like cameras are likely to get a bit closer, since they do not require guaranteed delivery nor error-free transmission.

I don't think so. Intel chipsets don't see it this way, AHCI is merely the full featureset of SATA, native command queueing and all that jazz.

While the hardware support for hot-plugable drives (longer ground pins etc) is built into all SATA interfaces that I have seen, I think we can agree that the OS needs a proper driver in order to take advantage of the hardware feature.