From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Nov 23 03:17:14 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A44CE16A4CE for ; Sun, 23 Nov 2003 03:17:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from lv.raad.tartu.ee (lv.raad.tartu.ee [194.126.106.110]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3821843FCB for ; Sun, 23 Nov 2003 03:17:13 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from toomas.aas@raad.tartu.ee) Received: Message by Barricade lv.raad.tartu.ee with ESMTP id hANBHBnV020674; Sun, 23 Nov 2003 13:17:11 +0200 Message-Id: <200311231117.hANBHBnV020674@lv.raad.tartu.ee> Received: from INFO/SpoolDir by raad.tartu.ee (Mercury 1.48); 23 Nov 03 13:17:13 +0200 Received: from SpoolDir by INFO (Mercury 1.48); 23 Nov 03 13:16:55 +0200 From: "Toomas Aas" Organization: Tartu City Government To: Scott W Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 13:16:50 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Priority: normal In-reply-to: <3FBFD40C.6020703@mindcore.net> References: <200311222031.hAMKVwm2006917@lv.raad.tartu.ee> cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: (Semi)hot swap IDE X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 11:17:14 -0000 Hello! I wrote: > >If the majority is right and IDE drives cannot be hot swapped, this > >would indicate that we would need to power down the machine every time > >we want to change the backup HDs. This would be less than > >perfect, but since we are cheap we could live with it. > >OTOH I read 'man atacontrol' and saw that there are commands like > >'atacontrol detach' and 'atacontrol attach' which seem to be meant > >for detaching/attaching IDE devices while the machine is running. > >Does this mean that I could actually run 'atacontrol detach ', swap the > >drive and then run 'atacontrol attach ' and be able to use > >the second HD after that? Is anyone doing something like that? To which Scott W replied: > I dislike IDE and tend ot avoid it like the plague when possible, Me too. > but: > 1. The 'generic' removeable drive trays for IDE that use a normal IDE > controller (like attaching to the slave or secondary channel on most > onboard IDE), with another disk or device attached that's being used, do > not support removeable devices. It's _extremely_ likely that you'll > hang the IDE bus. If there is only CD-ROM (which is almost never used) attached as primary master and the removable disk attached as secondary master then maybe I don't need to worry too much about that. > 2. Having mentioned #1 already, it's _possible_ that using a secondary > controller (unsure if this can be the second channel of onboard or not, > but NOT simply the slave of a given channel with another device), and > atacontrol, it appears (no, I have not tried this), you can bring the > controller itself (or channel?) offline, attach or remove the drive, and > then reattach it. I'd like to hear more details on this one myself, and > may have a system I can test it on if I get too bored, but have long ago > chucked my IDE trays.. I'll probably be forced to do some testing on this during next few weeks. I'll keep you posted on the results. -- Toomas Aas | toomas.aas@raad.tartu.ee | http://www.raad.tartu.ee/~toomas/ * Life ain't fair, but the root password helps.