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Hot-Swapping IDE Devices

F

fat-tony

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 15, 2003
Messages
1,205
Two cow-orkers and I got in a discussion today about hot-swapping IDE drives. I took the stance that it's a Bad Idea(tm), and shouldn't be done. They refuted my claim, saying that it was perfectly find under Windows XP, and that no harm would come from it. So, we found a 3gb drive kicking around and tried it. Booted it with the drive connected, windows picked it up. I then unplugged it :O while it was running. My Computer crashed when I tried to open the non-existant drive, but then continued fine. Device manager showed the drive to be missing. I then hooked it back up, and got nothing until I went back to Device Manager and told it to "Scan for hardware changes". This brought the drive back and it was accessible again.

All of this scares the crap out of me. I don't think that, electrically, IDE was made for hot-swapping. I'm just waiting for this to kill a controller or a drive or something.

Any input?
 
I don't believe IDE are meant to be hot-swappable, because in some cases, it might fail, and kill some hardware.

It's kind of like overclocking, you can do it, but its not necessarily supported, and in some cases it might fail and burn up your CPU.

Edit: Spelling
 
That's my take on it too. Sure, what they demonstrated may have worked without many problems, but it's messing with fire.
 
fat-tony said:
That's my take on it too. Sure, what they demonstrated may have worked without many problems, but it's messing with fire.
Click to expand...

Find another HDD(different), copy everything off the first one, and put it onto the second. Then try to hot-swap. It probably wont work.

Edit: Just noticed the University of Saskatchewan is in the same city as me. :cool: My mother works there.. in dentistry.
 
acetic said:
Edit: Just noticed the University of Saskatchewan is in the same city as me. :cool: My mother works there.. in dentistry.
Click to expand...

I just noticed the same and was going to PM you :). I'm actually in Moose Jaw for the summer, but I'll be back up in Saskatoon for the fall.
 
IDE hotswapping without equipment designed properly for it (expect it to be expensive) can fry components. It might not fry anything on any particular attempt, but getting lucky doesn't make it safe.
 
Cardboard Hammer said:
IDE hotswapping without equipment designed properly for it (expect it to be expensive) can fry components. It might not fry anything on any particular attempt, but getting lucky doesn't make it safe.
Click to expand...

Thank you. The guys at work just didn't believe me. Now, all I need to do is find some kind of definitive source that says this. Googling for it returns next to nothing other than "hot-swap" ide bays, which are generally pretty shoddy looking.
 
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