Hot Swappable HD

[MrJim]

I bought a new PC yesterday to replace a very tired XP Lenovo my oldest son has patiently used for a couple years~~another Lenovo in fact...it has a feature I wasn't aware of and hadn't heard of before. I googled this "Hot Swappable Hard Drive" but still am not real clear as to the purpose or if it would be of any use to me.

Does anyone use this? I think I could see how maybe it could do back ups? Store extra data? With a TB of space on the HD I'm not soon to run out of space.

BTW Windows 8 is pretty sweet I have to say...was prepared to be "frustrated" but no complaints so far.

 

[C-Man]

Any old SATA drive is hot-swappable. I would think they're referring to the hard drives you can put in the "Ultra Bay", where the DVD drive normally goes.

 

[MrJim]

Any old SATA drive is hot-swappable. I would think they're referring to the hard drives you can put in the "Ultra Bay", where the DVD drive normally goes.

Yeah it's a fat/wide slot about half the size of an 8-track below the CD/DVD trays. I'm looking on Amazon and this kit looks like what is in the book...maybe i should look in the box to see if there was a kit that came with it.

Amazon.com: SANOXY® 2.5" USB 2.0 SATA Hard Drive HDD Case Enclosure: Electronics

not sure what I'd ever use this for~nice size to back up and stick in a safe deposit box I guess.

 

[Qyöt27]

'Hot swapping' is the ability to add/remove components while the system is powered on. Like a flash drive.

I personally wouldn't do it with internal components. Flash drives (and external drives) can be unmounted through the OS, so I don't worry about them. Same with other peripheral components like mice, keyboards, or my PlayStation 2 controller-to-USB adapter.

Beyond the technical meaning of the phrase, it's pretty much an example of flashy marketing. Never mind the fact that generally, the user won't be using the drive that way or that they wouldn't use it that way if they knew what the phrase was actually referring to. But because it sounds exotic, it can cash in on the desire for something technologically advanced (even though something that's a decade or more old isn't exactly cutting edge technology).

 

[C-Man]

I suppose the idea behind it is for quick and easy backups, but I've never seen anybody actually use that. Every system I've seen with that sort of bay usually has nothing in it but lots of dust. Most people who do backups regularly either bolt another drive into the system or use network-attached storage.

 

[MrJim]

I suppose the idea behind it is for quick and easy backups, but I've never seen anybody actually use that. Every system I've seen with that sort of bay usually has nothing in it but lots of dust. Most people who do backups regularly either bolt another drive into the system or use network-attached storage.

Yeah I've got carbonite + and external backup~I expect it will end up like the floppy drive on my old compaq, unused and dusty

 

[Mazzaroth]

Any old SATA drive is hot-swappable. I would think they're referring to the hard drives you can put in the "Ultra Bay", where the DVD drive normally goes.

You know I'm not so sure that's true. There was a time when I added a 250GB SATA drive while the computer was still on and the chip fried. It was the first time I had a piece of hardware die on me. It may technically work if you're careful but I don't think SATA drives are intentionally designed for hot swapping.

The purpose of hot swapping is mainly for high-traffic servers that run constantly. This allows the host of the server(s) to add extra HD space, for example, without shutting down the entire system to do so.

Of course this is pertaining to hardware, not software. Hot swapping software is simply software that allows your operating system to recognize new hardware while it's running.

 

[C-Man]

Yours might have been a SATA I drive. Some of those used an IDE -> SATA converter bridge so the manufacturers could use up old stocks of IDE drives.

 

[NiobiumTragedy]

Yeah I've got carbonite + and external backup~I expect it will end up like the floppy drive on my old compaq, unused and dusty

How do you like Carbonite? I've heard it advertised on the radio a lot but never really considered offsite backups because I honestly don't trust others with personal information. However lately I've been considering getting something along the lines of a dropbox and wanted to look into this Carbonite thing.

 

[MrJim]

How do you like Carbonite? I've heard it advertised on the radio a lot but never really considered offsite backups because I honestly don't trust others with personal information. However lately I've been considering getting something along the lines of a dropbox and wanted to look into this Carbonite thing.

I've been using it for 3 years now I guess~never "needed" it yet but I have tested it regularly to retrieve and always works very well. Personally I think it is more manageable on PC than Mac (I have it on both), the scheduling works better, but it is cheap insurance.

 

[awitch]

I usually see the hot-swappable drives on servers with an array of redundant disks (RAID). If a drive goes bad, you can pull it out and push a new drive in without powering down. The array will then rebuild itself.

Maybe the Lenovo you mentioned has RAID 1 (mirrored disks)?

 

[MrJim]

I usually see the hot-swappable drives on servers with an array of redundant disks (RAID). If a drive goes bad, you can pull it out and push a new drive in without powering down. The array will then rebuild itself.

Maybe the Lenovo you mentioned has RAID 1 (mirrored disks)?

No there's only one disk in the box.

So it sounds like one could put as OS on a hot-swappable and boot from it?

 

[awitch]

No there's only one disk in the box.

So it sounds like one could put as OS on a hot-swappable and boot from it?

Hot swapping is only useful if you have RAID (or SAN) or you want to use actual hard drives like USB flash drives. If you only have one disk with the OS, you couldn't pull that drive out without crashing everything, even if it was hot swappable.

 

[MrJim]

Hot swapping is only useful if you have RAID (or SAN) or you want to use actual hard drives like USB flash drives. If you only have one disk with the OS, you couldn't pull that drive out without crashing everything, even if it was hot swappable.

I was thinking as far as a rescue disk, like when folks put a small linux distro on a flash drive to get into a system to fix something, a larger hot swap could be loaded with primary OS and through BIOS have it boot from there instead of internal disk...just thinking out loud, kind of out of my league here :o

 

[awitch]

I was thinking as far as a rescue disk, like when folks put a small linux distro on a flash drive to get into a system to fix something, a larger hot swap could be loaded with primary OS and through BIOS have it boot from there instead of internal disk...just thinking out loud, kind of out of my league here :o

You can do multiple OS's on a single drive and if you can boot to a recovery shell from a flash drive, then you don't really need the hot swap.

 

[MrJim]

You can do multiple OS's on a single drive and if you can boot to a recovery shell from a flash drive, then you don't really need the hot swap.

Yeah it sounds like something that is not going to get used