Storage backup drive help--USB or removable SATA?

I

iroc409

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 17, 2006
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I've decided that since I'm kind of bad with backups, I thought the best way to make sure it happens is to have a sort of "online" backup. Something that I can run Robocopy or Sync Toy once or twice a day to backup my server (may consider commercial products). My network computers do this daily to the server.

What I would like to do is just be able to swap the online drive once a month with a spare. That way I have two current backups, and one can be stored securely. It also provides minimal pain for consistent backups.

The problem is, of course I would kind of like to run some sort of removable SATA. I already have a trayless drive bay (though it's not really a "hot swap" design). However, it sounds like run-of-the-mill SATA drives don't really "detach" easily, often requiring to shut the machine down. In that case, it seems that USB would be a better solution--it's more universal. Other than the initial backup to the drives, I doubt there would be a substantial amount of data moving, so the slower speed probably isn't a huge problem.

So, what are some ideas? Can I install an inexpensive controller to have the hot-swap capability? Would any of them even work with my plain old SATA trayless bay?
 
Hot-swap should work if the drive is in AHCI mode. I use an external enclosure with eSATA/USB (I use it connected to eSATA since it is way faster). Hot swap works fine on my old P5B-Deluxe mainboard as all my drives are in AHCI mode. I can disconnect any of my drives in Windows (using the remove hardware tray icon) and they connect properly when I power on the external enclosure.
 
I actually can't remember if I installed them as AHCI, but I can't imagine that I did not. Shouldn't I then be able to detach my non-system drives? I've never tried.

Would I need a hot-swap drive bay, or will the trayless unit work for that?
 
Would I need a hot-swap drive bay
Click to expand...

Not really but it will help. Original SATA1 was hot swappable as I have been hot swapping drives for 7+ years now on that OS.

In linux I do the following:
1. Unmount the filesystems on the device (LVM if necissary)
2. sleep the drive (not needed but I do this any ways)
3. unplug the data and power connectors.

On windows the difficulty is coaxing the OS that the drive is hot swappable so that you can manually unmount the filesystems. AHCI helps with this because microsoft recognizes AHCI to be hot swappable by default.

There is also the following program that may help with the hot removal in windows:
http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm
 
OK, thanks for the info. I will just have to try it, and hopefully it will work. The SATA will be nicer than USB, that's for sure. If Windows isn't happy, I will try the software tool
 
Hmm.. I haven't restarted the server yet, but it looks like I may have set the drives as IDE when I installed Server 2008. I have no disconnect feature for any drives. I'll have to hook up a monitor and see what it says.
 
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