Can I "hot swap" sata 2 drives on an Asus P5B deluxe

[freakybeatz]

Got myself an asus P5b deluxe motherboard with 2 sata 2 caddies in the front bays.

1 holds the system disk
the other holds a data drive.

What I need to know Is can I hot swap the data drive (Obviously not the system drive) while in windows to pop in another drive, or do I have to turn off, swap drives, reboot...?

I know theres an internal hot swap SATA2 connector but no reference to the "normal SATA2" (master and slave) connectors on the board

Cheers

Eddie

 

[WJA96]

Theoretically, you can hot-swap the drive. I'd back it up first though, obviously.

 

[BillytheImpaler]

I don't know about SATA on Windows but with Linux and OS X you unmount the file system(s) then unplug the drive. It works essentially in the same way that USB flash drives do.

 

[wizardmaxx]

Dont see a problem with that, been doing it for years. Obviously dont do it if the hard drive is being accessed, or disable write caching for the drive.

 

[freakybeatz]

cheers people

its a "hot sswap caddy", but says make sure your mobo suports it.

Didnt have much luck with my old ide setup, just wondered if this SATA business was more "friendly"

cheers

Eddie

 

[welshtom]

sata is hot swappable yea.
normally can diasble the device from the toolbar. theres a little icon saying devices can be disabled/enabled