Swapping IDE Drives in Linux without Rebooting?

Hasufin writes "I've got quite a few of those removable IDE drive bays in my computers. I'd like to be able to swap these drives without the need of rebooting linux. I've searched quite a bit via google and other resources but haven't found a good how-to. Any pointers? I've seen few mentions to hdparm -U & -R and a script or two, but haven't had any luck using it w/ my promise udma/66 & udma/100 offboard pci controllers... :\ Any help appreciated!"

Comments

Would this even work?

[Asprin]

Obviously, if someone's actually done it that trumps my blathering, but I wouldn't expect this to work -even with SCSI- unless the drives were geometrically identical because I don't know of a controller (IDE OR SCSI) that can re-init the drive inteface to refresh its own internal "picture" of the drive geometry on the fly.

The best bet would be to get a USB/IDE external tray/case (because USB was designed for these kinds of hot-swap shennanigans). THAT would work. Serial ATA might also be able to do this when it hits the streets.

I can't even see how you'd do it with single drive array in a RAID controller/cabinet with hot-swap trays because even though the array config data is written on the drives themselves (so you can swap controllers), pulling one drive and plugging in another, the controller would still expect to see the same array, which it wouldn't. You'd have to get the controller to refresh itself with the new array data.