Hot Swap Serial ATA Problem

[BrianTaylor]

Here is what I have:
3 servers I have built. All have a 5-bay SuperMicro SATA hot-swap backplane. 4 of those bays are run off of a Promise S150 SX4 in a 3 drive RAID5 array. The 4th spot allows expansion of the array at a later time. The 5th bay is run off an Addonics EI SATA PCI controller that "supports hot-swap." All drives are Samsung SpinPoint SP1614C Drives.

Here is how it works:
The RAID5 array is fine. The problem is with the single drive. My intention was to use it as a hard drive backup system and I have serveral hard drives with extra backplane rails and hard shell foam cases so they can be easily swapped and taken off-site. The problem comes when removing the drives from the system. Windows 2000 Server Standard is treating them as internal hard drives, and upon removal I get the "Unsafe Removal of Device" dialogue, which is sometimes followed by the "Delayed Write Failed" error.

Here is what I wanted:
I wanted it to treat the removable drives like a removable device, such as a USB key or a flash card. You plug it in, the drive pops up. You unplug it, the drive disappears. In fact, in my initial testing I am pretty sure I had it that way. However, after bringing all the servers up, I now get the errors mentioned above.

So, the question is, has anyone been able to get a similar setup working in the manner I described? I would imagine that there would be a registry setting somewhere for the drives that tells the OS how to treat them, but I can't find any info regarding that. I have also considered buying a SATA external enclosure and trying that, but I'm not sure it would work. Does anyone have any suggestions? If it helps, my Addonics EI controllers do have an external SATA port.

Brian Taylor

 

[insanarchist]

I am by no means an expert, but would it not make sense that the system is still writing stuff to that HDD when you remove it? That, and what's wrong with just clicking the "remove device" deal? I have to do that for my thumbdrive anyway. I dunno, like I said, I'm no expert

 

[BrianTaylor]

The "Remove Device" systray icon doesn't ever appear. It does when I use portable USB hard drives though.

So the only way to do it without the errors is to go into device manager and uninstall the drive. If you disable, it will remain disabled next time you put the drive in, then you have to go back in and enable it.

The goal of the system was to be easy enough that a grade school secretary could handle it herself. That is to just pull one drive out, slip the other in, and not have to worry about logging into the server or anything else.

I am guessing this is just a matter of getting the right controller. I am just looking for someone who has done the same thing so I can buy whatever they did.

Brian Taylor

 

[BrianTaylor]

After a ton of screwing around and reasearching, I've come to realize that SATA hot-swap isn't that great.

I was able to make the system work however. Using a Microsoft tool called DevCon I am able to make a small batch file that uninstalls the hard drive when my backup job is successfully completed. Then, when you swap in the new drive it rescans the disks and the next one pops right up.

Not perfect, but works well enough.

Brian Taylor