[Cialug] Poor man's hot-swappable hard drive

[Claus]

Is it possible to have the power cable and IDE cable hang out of the 
computer case and plug in a HD as needed while the computer is running?

I'm mostly concerned if hardware could be damaged or data be corrupted.

Basically this would be to backup data onto a hard drive that is then 
stored somewhere else.  The HD would be mounted to a *BDS system as 
needed without having to reboot that system.

   Claus