Hot swap ide question

[TRUCK0321]

I would like to be able to install a ide hard drive while the system is running. I don't think this is the same as a hot-swap situation but I don't even know what you would call it. I do a lot of customer data backup and it would save me a lot of time to be able to take someone's hard drive, plug it in to my computer and start backing up or manipulating data, etc. with out having to reboot the system. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.

 

[etarhan]

My idea is that this is not a good idea.

You simply cannot install and remove regular ide hard disks while the power is on.

To be sure, you may try and for several times you may be lucky, too.

But this is not the proper way, this is inviting trouble.

I remember reading about hot swap ide disks. But, judging by the scarcity, I conclude that this is not a feasible solution at all.

If I needed to frequently move data from one machine to another, I would use a USB HDD or similar medium (the name may be different, but you get the idea). A zip drive, a direct cable connection, anything with reasonable (not necessarily the highest) speed and aloowing live connections could be used.

Good luck,
Engin

 

[Jontmke]

I agree.
Get a USB external drive to carry around with you for large amounts of data. And get one of the cool USB keychain memory cards for smaller [still 128mb!] data.
They probably will need drivers to install on the PC, keep them on a CD, and away you go.

Jon

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. (Bertrand Russell)

 

[paparazi]

Yes an external USB hard drive is the way to go (USB2 ideally) but would only work at full speed on USB2 equipt machines, same go for "flash pens" or whatever they are called, you can get 512mb versions now which would be enough for most peoples document files but obviously not whole music and picture library's.
Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[TRUCK0321]

This would work if everyone had USB 2 or at least usb 1.0 equipped computers. Unfortunately this often times not the case. Also, I normally do a full ghost of a hard drive before doing anything else and it would take hours on a usb 1.0 which is what most people still have. I found something that might work at this link,

http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg26_firewireidehotswapdrive.htm.

This would be perfect if it had bays for multiple hard drives.

 

[Dreamland]

TRUCK,

There are multi-bay cases on Granit Digital's site - check under 'products'. It sounds like you're talking about two different capabilities, though.

You mention that you want to ghost the drive, etc, on your computer. This assumes that it has been removed from the other computer first, making the other computer unuseable for the time being. You would have to shut down the source computer first anyway and probably don't really need hot-swap capability on those computers. The issue there is probably more of 'easy removeability' which is easily solved by the relatively inexpensive plug-in IDE trays (~$25 on eBay new). They are *not* hot-swapable and still require the computer to be turned off first, but you would be doing that anyway, right? The trays themselves usually have a slide-open lid and the drive itself can be removed quickly from the trays. I use them and don't even bother screwing the drive on the tray - it fits in pretty snugly by itself. You could dispense with the whole tray scheme by just physically removing the drive, but this get's pretty tiresome unless you have speed rails and easily accessable cases. I'm not that lucky!

If you now have the 'loose' drive, the issue of hot-swapping only applies to your computer. This is where the single-tray IDE to FireWire (or USB 2.0) hot-swap is needed. You can connect the drive (temporarily) in the external carrier, power it up and hot-plug it to your computer using the FireWire/USB cable. Note that the drive's IDE port itself really isn't being hot-plugged. You're just powering it up in an external case and partially initializing it's IDE port without using a computer - the remainder of the initialization takes place (through external circuitry and O/S drivers) when you plug it in to your computer.

When you're done working on it, unplug, power down the external carrier, remove the drive and replace into the original computer's tray. The IDE socket was not made for constant plugging/unplugging, but it can certainly hold up for several hundred cycles if you're careful.