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Date:      Fri, 02 Mar 2001 11:44:56 -0600
From:      Porter <ocean@ecenet.com>
To:        Artem Koutchine <matrix@ipform.ru>
Cc:        Christopher Farley <chris@northernbrewer.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Hot swap IDE device?
Message-ID:  <3A9FDC18.3D1728A6@ecenet.com>
References:  <20010301112155.A5003@northernbrewer.com> <00f501c0a275$df546fa0$0c00a8c0@ipform.ru>

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Well, besides the implications of damaging the drive, which we'll assume
is "fixed" because of the "kit",
there's the fact that the drives are mounted.  I would think that with
some hacking,
you could get the drive to work like a cdrom.  With a cdrom you can
unmount, change, and mount a new one.
The only problem then, I would think, would be the BIOS freaking out
because you just swapped
a 500MB drive for a 7TB drive :)  I would have no clue how to go about
this, my assumption is that you'd have
to have a program that manipulate the BIOS, or a program to "bypass"
anything the BIOS cares about.  I don't even know
how much the BIOS has to do with the computer once it is fully booted,
so these are just speculations.
Michael Porter
ocean@ecenet.com

Artem Koutchine wrote:

> This is a bad idea. IDE is not a plug-n-play (or to say
> it right: HOT SWAP) bus.  You might disconnect
> a drive more or less safely, but reconnecting a drive into
> a working system can cause all kinds of troubles. And it
> has nothing to do with FreeBSD. It is related to
> electric schematic and interface standards. If you need
> hot swap try: SCSI, USB, FireWire??? drives.
> Regards,
> Artem
>
> > Is there any way to get FreeBSD to add/remove an IDE device from a
> > running system?
> >
> > I'm experimenting with a $15 removable IDE hard drive kit. I would
> > ideally like to be able to power down the drive, remove it, insert
> > a new drive (possibly a different manufacturer/capacity), power it
> > up, and force FreeBSD to recognize the new IDE device.
> > Is this possible?
> > I assume I can swap identical drive models endlessly, and FreeBSD
> would
> > be none the wiser. However, two years down the road, it will be
> impossible
> > to replace a broken drive with the identical model.


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