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

[Renegade Muskrat]

It is possible to hot-swap IDE. Sort of. I've tried it on both Windows 
and Linux. With Windows it did not work; the OS never recognized the 
drive. With Linux i was able to mount the drive after plugging it in 
while the machine was one. I definitely do not recommend hot swapping 
IDE equipment though; it goes against the specification and can result 
in hardware damage, data loss, etc. If you do decide to play with hot 
swapping IDE, i recommend doing it on a computer you don't care about 
and with drives you don't care about (and have backed up to a different 
machine).

I've purchased a few IDE -> USB/Firewire kits from www.sunshinestor.com 
and been quite happy with them. I'd recommend going this route.

At 10:53 AM 1/7/2005 -0600, you wrote:

Aren't there kits to make an internal drive an USB drive?

 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: David Champion [mailto:dave@visionary.com]
 > Sent: Friday, January 07, 2005 10:52 AM
 > To: cialug@cialug.org
 > Subject: Re: [Cialug] Poor man's hot-swappable hard drive
 >
 >
 > If you shop around for bargains, you can sometimes find a decent
 > external USB or FireWire drive cheaper than if you bought the
 > same drive
 > by itself.
 >
 > -dc
 >
 > Daniel Wittenberg wrote:
 > > IDE like that wasn't ment to be hot-swappable, so you could
 > definitely
 > > fry something.  You might get lucky and have it work, maybe
 > not.  Your
 > > OS would also have to know how to rescan for IDE changes,
 > which usually
 > > only happens with SCSI/FW/USB.  I think they do make
 > hot-swap IDE disk
 > > carriers, and obviously scsi/firewire work as well.  I would 
suggest
 > > just buying an external USB or firewire drive and using
 > that instead.
 > >
 > > Dan
 > >
 > > On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 10:16 -0600, Claus wrote:
 > >
 > >>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
 >
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > Cialug mailing list
 > Cialug@cialug.org
 > http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
 >
At 10:53 AM 1/7/2005 -0600, you wrote:

Aren't there kits to make an internal drive an USB drive?

 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: David Champion [mailto:dave@visionary.com]
 > Sent: Friday, January 07, 2005 10:52 AM
 > To: cialug@cialug.org
 > Subject: Re: [Cialug] Poor man's hot-swappable hard drive
 >
 >
 > If you shop around for bargains, you can sometimes find a decent
 > external USB or FireWire drive cheaper than if you bought the
 > same drive
 > by itself.
 >
 > -dc
 >
 > Daniel Wittenberg wrote:
 > > IDE like that wasn't ment to be hot-swappable, so you could
 > definitely
 > > fry something.  You might get lucky and have it work, maybe
 > not.  Your
 > > OS would also have to know how to rescan for IDE changes,
 > which usually
 > > only happens with SCSI/FW/USB.  I think they do make
 > hot-swap IDE disk
 > > carriers, and obviously scsi/firewire work as well.  I would 
suggest
 > > just buying an external USB or firewire drive and using
 > that instead.
 > >
 > > Dan
 > >
 > > On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 10:16 -0600, Claus wrote:
 > >
 > >>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
 >
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > Cialug mailing list
 > Cialug@cialug.org
 > http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
 >
                                                -- Dan
   --------------------------------------------------------------------
             "I'm still sane on three planets and two moons."
   --------------------------------------------------------------------
       Daniel Ramaley                  3118 Cottage Grove Ave Apt 8
       dramaley at spatulacity dot cx        Des Moines, Iowa 50311
       http://www.spatulacity.cx/                    (515) 271-5233
   --------------------------------------------------------------------
        WARNING: REDISTRIBUTION OF THIS MESSAGE MAY BE IN
                 VIOLATION OF APPLICABLE COPYRIGHT LAWS.
                 THIS MESSAGE NOT GUARANTEED Y-TO-K COMPLIANT.