Swapping multiple hard drives

[skubiszm]

I have a handful of older hard drives laying around. Regular 3.5" ATA drives. All of these drives, to some degree, have some data I would like to access. I was considering purchasing a HD rack and an inner for each of the drives. This way I could easily pop the drives in and out of my desktop.

Now, my question is do I have to power down the PC, swap the drive, then power it back up? I don't want this hassle and would like be able to hot swap the drives, but I don't think I can with an ATA drive. Or are there some controlers that support this? Or is there a HD rack with a usb backend that would be used for hot swaping the drive? Any ideas would be appreciated.

-skubiszm

[IsaacKuo]

You should be able to hotswap a 3.5" drive using a USB adapter. Newegg sells one, but the customer reviews on it are...umm...well, I wouldn't buy that model myself. I haven't searched around for others. Most USB adapters are full enclosures, which may not be as convenient to swap drives with.

[skubiszm]

I have seen those USB enclosures, but I was looking for an internal solution. And I have never seen one that you can use to easly switch between harddrives.

-skubiszm

[Daedrus]

I have a handful of older hard drives laying around. Regular 3.5" ATA drives. All of these drives, to some degree, have some data I would like to access. I was considering purchasing a HD rack and an inner for each of the drives. This way I could easily pop the drives in and out of my desktop.

Now, my question is do I have to power down the PC, swap the drive, then power it back up? I don't want this hassle and would like be able to hot swap the drives, but I don't think I can with an ATA drive. Or are there some controlers that support this? Or is there a HD rack with a usb backend that would be used for hot swaping the drive? Any ideas would be appreciated.

-skubiszm

You can find several types of IDE hotswap cages. When you unlock the cage, it powers down the drive so that you can remove it. We have it working here on a windows machine to transfer ghost images. This would actually work better on a linux system because you can unmount the drive, replace it, and remount it in the same mount point without any problems. I don't know how much the replacement trays are, but the cage with one tray should run around $35.

[skubiszm]

Do you need a special IDE controler to support that or does the cage handle that? I have never actually used one before so I'm not exactly sure how they work. Looking around on newegg I saw the racks priced around $35 and extra trays were between $10-$15. Do some cages support hot swapping while others do not?

-skubiszm

[Daedrus]

Do you need a special IDE controler to support that or does the cage handle that? I have never actually used one before so I'm not exactly sure how they work. Looking around on newegg I saw the racks priced around $35 and extra trays were between $10-$15. Do some cages support hot swapping while others do not?

-skubiszm

There isn't any special IDE controller required. The cage handles the power up and down of the drive. I am pretty sure the some don't support hot swapping, but by now, most probably do support it.

[skubiszm]

Great. Sounds like it will work out well. Thanks again.

-skubiszm

[saikee]

All my hdds are in caddies and I have not a single disk permanently fixed inside any of the 3 boxes in the house. The mobile rack (Q-tec) I use cost 5 GBP in UK (or US$ 10).

I have never known that an IDE disk can be hot plugged but Sata disks do support hot plugging. In XP one can tell the system stop using the disk. The instruction is enclosed with the mobile rack designed for Sata disk. I have read from literature that it was one Sata design requirements to be able to hot plug!

Theoretically one can umount the disk, cut off the power and pull the unit out without damage but I am not sure how safely a new IDE could be inserted when the PC is already hot and its BIOS never has the new disk information when the system is booted.

On the mobile rack I recommend Q-Tec which is 100% plastic and has no key (just a plastic stopper from disengagement). It has a rigid frame. I replaced the entire fleet (bought over 25 sets) because the previous metal type has a "U" frame which can be twisted easily (no torsional rigidity). A slight off-contact can easily make the mobile storage rack unreliable. The Q-tec is the cheapest but more robust and has never failed me so far.

Also if you need hotplugging you can screw a mobile storage rack on to a full size 5.25" external hdd/CDrom drive enclosure. This way you can have the hdd working either as an internal or external disk. Done this twice already with perfect result. Internal hdd obviously transfers data many times faster than a USB unit.