SATA Hotswapping

muon · 1 Jun 2008 at 19:22

I installed this device

http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/products/mobile-racks.php?we_objectID=4343

and its connected via SATA to my motherboard. The BIOS detects any hard drive i put in as a master drive. With my OS drive being the othe master drive.

I have the GA-X38-DQ6 motherboard with the latest BIOS, however how to i enable hotswapping of drives? I know SATA allows it and Vista is perfectly compatible with hotswapping. Especially since the motherboard comes with an e-sata bracket.

I do not want to reboot everytime i put a new hard drive in.

Thanks.

nightmare99 · 1 Jun 2008 at 19:35

You need to make sure you are using AHCI, check your SATA settings in the BIOS.

muon · 1 Jun 2008 at 21:12

nightmare99 said:
You need to make sure you are using AHCI, check your SATA settings in the BIOS.

Thanks for that. But Vista refuses to load if I enable SATA AHCI. It keeps rebooting as soon as the Vista loading screen comes up.

mdjmcnally · 1 Jun 2008 at 23:00

In which case they are running in IDE mode so treats as an IDE disk not a SATA.

I am guessing that when you installed you didn't F6 a floppy disk for the ICH drivers or nlite/slipstream them in.

As such these are IDE as far as the computer is concerned rather then SATA drives.

Also I don't believe that the motherboard controllers support hotswapping anyway. Normally need a RAID addin card to be hotswappable.

muon · 1 Jun 2008 at 23:37

Ive found a workaround for now. Ive enabled AHCI for the gigabyte controller and then installed the drivers via windows, and switched the icybox to the gigabyte controller. It does give slightly worse performance, but i'd rather have the convenience.