Hello,

I am planning on replacing a server that one of its purposes is to archive some weekly backup data, which I currently copy to USB hard drives for permanent storage. I am looking to replace with a new server that supports Hot Swap SATA. Are there any issues if hot swapping a SATA drive like I was changing the USB drive (plug in, mke2fs, mount, copy data, umount, unplug)? I've used hot swap SATA in RAID 5 arrays before that worked good for redundancy, but that was below the OS level - obviously the new backup archive drive would not be part of the RAID array.

Thanks,
slacky

No problems for me in *buntu

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I have not done this, but I rather suspect you'll have a problem in that the drive won't be automatically detected and mounted since it will appear in a location that UDEV isn't watching.

I think you'll have to force a rescan of the bus after inserting the drive. This should cause the new drive to be detected.

You can do this by going to /sys/class/scsi/scsi_host and examining the entries. One of them will be the entry for the SATA port you've connected your drive bay to. When you figure out which one it is, cd into that directory, then enter this command: echo "- - -" >scan

This will cause the system to rescan that bus and your new drive should be detected. Then you make your file system, etc, and you should be good to go.

edit:

If you are using the ahci driver for sata, I understand that it does support hotplugging. In this event, your drive should be detected automatically.

1 members found this post helpful.

Okay, that makes sense. Looking at what I'm planning on buying for a server, motherboard SATA is Intel ICH9R which should be the AHCI driver, hardware RAID card is 3ware 3w_9xxx driver - so I think I will be able hot swap either way I connect the drives.