[Eug-lug] Hot swap SATA

[Quentin Hartman]

On 1/2/07, Garl Grigsby <badd_karma at comcast.net> wrote:
<snip>
> on plugging this into the SATA port on the motherboard. I just need to
> understand what I need to do to make the drive 'visible' to the OS once
> I've plugged it in. Will the OS 'see' it automagically or do I have to
> 'scan' for it. If I do have to initiate something, then what?
> Documentation on this seems vague at best.

It depends on what distro you are running. Ubuntu will generally
"automagically" mount any new volumes that appear (using a melange of
hotplug, HAL, and DBUS), as do most other modern distros. If not, a
normal mount command should do the trick. ie- mount /dev/sda1
/mnt/hot_drive

> > When you pull the drive make sure it is unmounted.  Then remove the
> > drive so that it is disconnected from the back plane of the drive
> > cage.  Wait 3 or 4 minutes the drive should have stopped spinning
> > after 2 minutes and then remove the drive.
> Is this to prevent physical damage to the drive (spinning head + motion
> = bad)? I'm just asking because I have a nasty habit of unplugging a USB
> hard drive and just running with it (after unmounting it of course)

Most modern drives (especially 2.5" drives, fwiw) have mechanisms in
them that cause the heads to park within a fraction of a second once
they lose power. Some 2.5" drives even have accelerometers in them
that will force the heads to park if the G's on the drive get to be
too great. That's the important part, parked heads, not spinning
platters. Once the heads are parked, it doesn't matter much if the
drive is jostled, as there is nothing to bonk against the platters.
Will waiting a couple minutes make sure the disks have stopped
spinning and the heads are parked? Yes. Is waiting those couple extra
minutes overly paranoid? Probably. Is that time worth it? Only you
know for sure...

-- 
-Regards-

-Quentin Hartman-