Hotswapping SATA HD's on Intel chipsets

[TechGuy]

If you have an older motherboard with an Intel chipset like mine (ICH5R) and want to have hotswap capability without tripping errors in event viewer, try this:

My setup uses a Intel D875PBX motherboard and two Thermaltake trayless internal SATA trays.

Use a power supply that has SATA power connectors - stay away from the four-pin molex adapers! I found I could not get clean hotswapping without the +3.3v line! Yes I know it's listed in the specs as not required, but it seems to make a huge difference for me.

The Thermaltake tray comes with a "special" adapter that allows activity and power-on LED functions, and it works as stated, other than hotswapping not working due to missing +3.3v power. I rather have good hotswapping than LED indicators, so I don't use the adapter and instead plug my power supply SATA power connector directly into the tray.

I use a freeware utility called "Hotswap!" (google it) and it gives me a icon in the system tray that allows clean removal of the SATA drives and also has a "detect hardware changes" function, since the ICH5 series controllers dont support hotswapping natively.

The end result is windows XP (pro) that allows hotswapping, I've been using this setup for 3 months now and transfering alot of audio data and swapping SATA drive on a regular basis and have not have any data loss problems. My logs are clean too.

I have to give Wikkipedia credit for steering me in the right direction... a Google search gave me a link to Wikki on the subject of SATA, and the Wikki suggested that +3.3v may be needed for hot swapping.

Thanks Wikki!

[Exavier]

That's impressive, I like that functionality, and it makes a setup like this (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v363/navig/Lubic%20Bench/Disassembled.jpg) swap-out build so much easier :cheers:

But now I'm so tempted to try something similar, but with two running simultaneously.. :cry:

[TechGuy]

I had tried (unsucessfully) to get clean hotswapping for over a year on this system. I tried many utilities that allowed hot swap functionality, and tried manually removing the drive from device manager. Nothing seened to work. I would get errors in the system log stating that drive removal either failed(!) or was done incorrectly when I ejected the SATA drive from it's enclosure. I tried removing power first then data cable and also tried removing the data cable first, then power. Nothing seemed to help. I got alot of system freezes, either temporary or permanent (ouch).
Of course, all of this testing was done using a power supply *without* SATA power connectors, and I used 4-pin molex-to-SATA adapters to power the SATA drive(s).

All of my problems went away after trying a power supply with "real" SATA power connectors. Swapping now works just like if the drive was an USB device. I left click the "Hotswap" icon in the system tray, select "safely remove drive x", get a info bubble that the drive is safe to remove, hear the drive spin down, remove the drive, insert another drive, right click the "Hotswap" icon, select "scan for hardware changes" and the new drive is mounted and ready to use.

The only minor issue is that "My computer" (and explorer) don't automatically update when the drive is removed and/or replaced. I just have to click "refresh" to get an updated screen.

I hope this info will help someone with similar problems, and hopefully save someone some time.

P.S.:
There alot of "hot swap" *capable* SATA enclosures out there, both internal and external. Sure, you can slap in a drive and pull it out, maybe without data corruption or system lock-up, but take a look at you system log..... see if the swap tripped any errors. I was suprised!

Enjoy!