Disconnecting an SATA drive without hot-swap capability?

Are there any gyrations that can be performed to allow an SATA drive to be
powered down and disconnected from a running system that doesn't have an
eSATA connection or hot swap capability?

I have an external drive that has both USB2 and SATA interfaces. Since I
need to power down and move the drive frequently, I've always used the USB
interface, but it's slow.

If I were to bring an SATA connection out of the box to the drive, is there
any sequence I could use that would allow me to power down and remove the
drive, and later bring it back online?

For example, would dismounting the drive using "mountvol", and then
disabling it by using a program such as "devmanview" and later reversing
the sequence work?

Since the drive has important data on it, I'm reluctant to simply try this
out to see what happens.

--
St. Paul, MN

Bert wrote:
Are there any gyrations that can be performed to allow an SATA drive to be
powered down and disconnected from a running system that doesn't have an
eSATA connection or hot swap capability?

I have an external drive that has both USB2 and SATA interfaces. Since I
need to power down and move the drive frequently, I've always used the USB
interface, but it's slow.

If I were to bring an SATA connection out of the box to the drive, is there
any sequence I could use that would allow me to power down and remove the
drive, and later bring it back online?

For example, would dismounting the drive using "mountvol", and then
disabling it by using a program such as "devmanview" and later reversing
the sequence work?

Since the drive has important data on it, I'm reluctant to simply try this
out to see what happens.


Why not simply treat it as a "fixed disk" ?

1) With system shut down, make the connection.
Power up the external.
2) Start system, do backup to external, select shutdown.
OS properly flushes system file cache to drive because
you used shutdown.
3) With system power off, power off enclosure and
disconnect SATA-ESATA cabling.

I don't see much point in some "hackery", to make
a fake hotswap capability. All it will take
is one mistake, to make you regret the choice.

If you change the motherboard SATA ports to AHCI,
and use the MSAHCI driver in Windows 7, that might
add hotswap for the internal ports. Using the
regedit "rearm" sequence, you can even do this
on an OS which is currently using a non-AHCI choice.

Driver re-arming...

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-...raid-ahci.html

"I'm not sure, but I know that the values for the subkeys
below all have to be 0:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\iaStorV
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\iaStor
"

A complete set would be...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\pciide\Start == 0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\msahci\Start == 0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\iaStorV\Start == 0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\iaStor\Start == 0

If you are working on a machine and moving back and
forth between PCIIDE and MSAHCI, you enable both of
them before dropping to BIOS level and selecting
the mode you want. By enabling both, if you screw
up your BIOS choice, the system will still boot.
Note that Windows 8 has some slightly different
names involved, and while the recipe is similar,
the details may differ.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\pciide\Start == 0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\msahci\Start == 0

The iaStor/iaStorV are for Intel chipsets supported
for RAID operation by the Win7 OS. The "V" stands
for Vista, and the capability might have been in
Vista too. But you won't be using RAID for this
exercise. MSAHCI gives you hot plug.

But personally, I wouldn't use it. I want a guarantee
the drive is *spun down* before I hit the power
switch on the enclosure. Very few combinations of
usage do that properly. Treating it like an internal
disk, and doing full boot-to-shutdown sequences, is
the closest you can get to emulating proper treatment.
I have platforms here, where when you select Eject,
the enclosure continues to spin. WinXP might be
the closest to doing it properly. I don't consider
Hotplug to be all that smooth at the best of times
(since behavior may not be the same on all OSes).

Paul

On Wed, 18 May 2016 21:09:33 -0000 (UTC), Bert wrote:

Are there any gyrations that can be performed to allow an SATA drive to be
powered down and disconnected from a running system that doesn't have an
eSATA connection or hot swap capability?

Anecdote 1: I've *disconnected* a SATA drive from a running system hundreds
of times over the past 8-10 years and don't remember ever having a problem
as a result. OTOH, *connecting* a SATA drive to a running system has been
interesting some of the time. That usually works, but on occasion I've seen
everything from the drive not being recognized at all until the system is
rebooted to the system immediately shutting down when the drive's power is
connected.

Anecdote 2: A few years ago I worked on a system that had a SATA-to-eSATA
adapter installed, very much like this one that costs a couple of dollars:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA67038W4910
It wasn't my PC so I had no direct experience, but the owner claimed that it
worked perfectly. His backup drives had USB and eSATA ports, and he wanted
to use the faster eSATA ports. The adapter allowed him to do that, with the
caveat that he used up two of his internal SATA ports in the process, which
wasn't an issue in his case.


--

Char Jackson

En el artículo , Bert
escribió:
Are there any gyrations that can be performed to allow an SATA drive to be
powered down and disconnected from a running system

Yes. http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

Used it happily for years.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) Windows 10: less of an OS, more of a drive-by mugging.
(")_(") -- "Esme" on el Reg

In Mike Tomlinson
wrote:

En el artículo , Bert
escribió:
Are there any gyrations that can be performed to allow an SATA drive
to be powered down and disconnected from a running system

Yes. http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

Used it happily for years.

This program provides a GUI for easily disabling the drive, as would be
done through the device manager.

So if that's all that's really needed in order to make an SATA drive
safe for powering down and removal, I'm all set.

Thanks for the pointer.

--
St. Paul, MN

In Paul wrote:

Bert wrote:
Are there any gyrations that can be performed to allow an SATA drive
to be powered down and disconnected from a running system ...

1) With system shut down, make the connection.
Power up the external.

As I said, I need to do this while the machine remains running.

--
St. Paul, MN