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Unplugging a HDD with Windows still running.
Can I just unplug a SATA HDD while Windows is still running?
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#2
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Unplugging a HDD with Windows still running.
Frank Martin wrote:
Can I just unplug a SATA HDD while Windows is still running? It is best to use the "Safely Remove" icon at the bottom of your screen. That prepares the OS for the removal of a data drive. Safely Remove should refuse to release the boot drive. If you unplug a SATA boot drive, without successfully using Safely Remove, then you'd be relying on the NTFS journalling capability, to undo the damage. You could even lose the most recently written file by doing that. SATA hot plug doesn't work with all possible drivers. There are some driver options which don't support hot plug. So an attempt to add a SATA drive to such a computer, while the power is on, could result in the drive being ignored. On some Intel chipset machines, the AHCI driver is one way to get hot plug capability. So some planning goes into making sure a new computer will be prepared for hot plug and unplug of SATA. USB flash memory uses some similar rules. "Safely Remove" is used for those as well. The driver that comes with the OS, provides all necessary functions. There is no planning to do, before using that. A lot of brand new computers, are using AHCI as a default, and so hot plug is there when you take delivery. For older hardware, there is some planning to do, to make SATA hot plugging work. Paul |
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Unplugging a HDD with Windows still running.
"Frank Martin" wrote in message ... Can I just unplug a SATA HDD while Windows is still running? Can? Yes. Should? No. |
#4
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Unplugging a HDD with Windows still running.
In ,
Frank Martin typed: Can I just unplug a SATA HDD while Windows is still running? You CAN but shouldn't! Amongst the many problems that can happen is you unplug it during a write cycle, trashing an area of the disc, or perhaps buffers have not yet been written out to disk, so programs you closed aren't on the disk as closed and the OS locks up when it does finally try to write them, or the data in the buffers will be lost, etc.. Either power down the computer or use the safely remove icon if it'll work; sometimes it won't work, simply because it knows there are buffers that haven't been written to the disk yet and other reasons too. HTH, Twayne` |
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