can i unplug / plug in sata drives while pc is on?

snow patrol · 23 May 2009 at 10:27

i'm looking to replace an aging 200gig drive with a 1.5tb one...however, as i have about 6 drives in my pc, and i can't recall which one is the 200gig one, i was hoping to simply unplug them one and a time whilst in windows until i got to the 200gig one, and then swap them over. Is this safe, or do i have to do things the hard way

(i'm lazy)

burtie · 23 May 2009 at 10:29

Well I've done it before and it was fine.

Flukester · 23 May 2009 at 10:48

just to make sure you don't lock windows, have device manager open when you unplug, then do a 'scan for hardware changes'

then connect new disk and do same...

always works that way

ian|Squared² · 23 May 2009 at 11:33

You should be able to do this, think of how eSATA drives work

miniyazz · 23 May 2009 at 15:21

It will work as long as AHCI mode is enabled in BIOS - that is what gives SATA HDDs plug and play. If that's not enabled you won't be able to plug in a new HDD in Windows and have it recognised; you will be able to unplug drives and see which are unplugged just by browsing a couple of folders deep into the drives after unplugging one and seeing which one loads an empty folder.
The computer will most likely hang only if you unplug the Windows drive.
Obviously it would make sense to get a torch and have a look at the labels on the drives before unplugging any to rule any out you can. I have a slightly more complex problem in that I have three identical F1s and four identical 7200.11s, it really is just unplug and hope!

Rroff · 23 May 2009 at 15:38

Obviously if you unplug the OS drive or pagefile drive then windows isn't gonna survive too well... infact any drive that an application has an I/O handle open on being disconnected could potentially cause the OS to crash.

Strictly SATA only supports plug and play in AHCI mode, in practise it may or may not work even with or without AHCI being enabled depending on your discs and controller, etc. its not exactly very well implemented.

Mattus · 24 May 2009 at 01:28

Here's a better plan: run a defrag on the 200GB drive. Put your hand on each drive in turn. The one that's grinding away is the right one

miniyazz · 24 May 2009 at 14:49

Mattus said:
Here's a better plan: run a defrag on the 200GB drive. Put your hand on each drive in turn. The one that's grinding away is the right one

The man has a plan! I shall try that next time I want to remove a drive and can't tell if it's my OS..

errata · 27 May 2009 at 12:55

why not just pop into the bios and see what drives on which sata connector,
they are numbered in the bios and numbered on the board

miniyazz · 28 May 2009 at 00:25

errata said:
why not just pop into the bios and see what drives on which sata connector,
they are numbered in the bios and numbered on the board

I have three identical F1s and four identical 7200.11s. Each drive in each set has the identical descriptor to each other drive in the set. This makes that policy tricky

Rroff · 28 May 2009 at 00:28

Mattus said:
Here's a better plan: run a defrag on the 200GB drive. Put your hand on each drive in turn. The one that's grinding away is the right one

Funny sometimes how its so easy to overlook the simple solution. Although with my 7200.12s its hard to tell the difference between idle and working.

errata · 29 May 2009 at 07:07

miniyazz said:
I have three identical F1s and four identical 7200.11s. Each drive in each set has the identical descriptor to each other drive in the set. This makes that policy tricky

Then there probably in raid so defrag aint going to work either. Your stuffed unless a problem is obvious. OP should be fine though! :cool:

miniyazz · 29 May 2009 at 16:22

errata said:
Then there probably in raid so defrag aint going to work either. Your stuffed unless a problem is obvious. OP should be fine though!

Actually they weren't in RAID at the time of posting, but have just set up the 1.5s in RAID 5. Still got three F1s non-RAIDed, but moved the OS drive to a 500Gb, problem solved. Slightly slower but I use a laptop for most things these days so I'll get over it, til SSD prices come down again