Release SATA drive in Windows?

C

Cronyx

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 24, 2005
Messages
146
Is there a way to release a SATA drive the way you release a USB one to prevent delayed write data loss, close all open file handles and release the drive letter? I need to hot swap drives a lot when making acronis images and some times I'll have to reboot to get it to see a drive on a SATA channel that just had something else on it. Question pertains to XP, Vista and 7 (as they're all used here.)

Thanks.
 
Depends on the drivers and chipset. You also need to enable AHCI or RAID mode.

From my experience with Intel based chipsets, using the default AHCI drivers that come with Windows7 will allow you to disconnect a SATA hard drive similar to the way you would disconnect a USB hard drive.

But if you install the drivers from Intel (their latest Intel Rapid Storage), it disables the ability to disconnect. So if you want that ability, you need to have AHCI or RAID mode in BIOS and stick with the Microsoft AHCI drivers.
 
There is very little chance that you can unplug a disk before the write cache is flushed by the system every second. Mind you, not the full cache is flushed every second, so 10 seconds is usually a safe wait time.

If you have an Intel controller, check that it is set to AHCI in the BIOS as ivoidwarranties mentioned.
I assume you're not hot-swapping your OS disk and that these disks have SATA power connectors, not molex.

You can also try hotswap if you don't have a hot-swappable chipset.

If you really want to be on the safe side, you can disable write caching for a specific drive in Device Manager. Select your disk, right-click Properties|Policies and unselect the "Enable write caching on the device" checkbox. Performance will be impaired, though.

Another option is to use write-through caching, where the data is written to both the cache and the disk. Again at a cost in performance. This can be set at application level, I don't know if there is a BIOS option for this, as is usual in RAID configs.
 
Maybe I've already got the capability to unmount then and don't know where to locate it. Is that in Disk Management some place?
 
Well, did you install the OSese while AHCI was turned on in the motherboard BIOs?
 
If you have AHCI on, yes you can. However, most drivers disable 'Hot Swap/Quick Remove' for your system root (C:\).

The way you find out if it's enabled is check Device Manager and go to Storage Controllers. It will say AHCI/Raid or IDE or possibly just be generic.
 
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