Removable IDE devices

[Bryan55]

Is there an IDE drive carrier that can hot-swap hard disks or a CD, maybe even a burner? The CD gets so very little use so I figure why have it adding a bit of heat to the box, & it'd be usable on 2 or 3 systems. If it wasn't for having to load the odd program via CD I'd stick to hard disks for backup. Most important is a good hard disk carrier, CD would be great if it is possible. As some removable drive need the system to Powered Off before changing disks I'm wondering if there are draw-backs to hot-swapping? Unless the reseller is being too cautious TIA!

[Szech]

I don't think you would be able to hot swap IDE drives, but I know you can buy a hard drive rack that you hook in through the front of your computer. My friend has it, and he has two hard drives in the protective cases that he can plug into the front of his computer when he's using it and lock it away when he isn't. Of course, he has to power down when he changes the drives, but he wants the security.

[Oli]

I too have racks, it's nice for changing OS, no need to dual boot, or using a HD for backup. I must turn Off the cpu before changing the rack

[tonym]

Bryan,

Windows = DOS = disk operating system.

When you hot-swap the primary drive, you've crashed the system by definition!!

However, you CAN hot swap the secondary drive, so long as it doesn't have a system partition on it. There are disk caddies out there that allow you to do this, although I don't know why you'd want to! Hot-swapping is appropriate for mirrored disks where a valid image of the swapped-out drive is accessible by the OS via a controller.

Now, I use replaceable caddies for all my secondary drives (I use them exclusively for data, etc.). They're not hot-swappable and I frankly wouldn't take the risk unless I had a mirrored or Raid X system.

Hope this helps...


Tony