Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 13:16:50 +0200 From: "Toomas Aas" <toomas.aas@raad.tartu.ee> To: Scott W <wegster@mindcore.net> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: (Semi)hot swap IDE Message-ID: <200311231117.hANBHBnV020674@lv.raad.tartu.ee> In-Reply-To: <3FBFD40C.6020703@mindcore.net> References: <200311222031.hAMKVwm2006917@lv.raad.tartu.ee>
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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 <channel>', swap the > >drive and then run 'atacontrol attach <channel>' 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.
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