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

Re:power?

[larien]

You do get hotswap IDE now, but obviously the OS needs to support it. As most modern OSs don't actually use the BIOS for disk accesses (past the kernel booting), the BIOS is a non-issue.

Re:Check LKML

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the start of the thread, and here is the complete listing of the thread (scroll down to "IDE and hot-swap disk caddies").

Try this...

[PoiBoy]

I've never swapped an IDE hard drive, but I have hot-swapped IDE CD-ROM's out of shear laziness.

Just be sure to unmount the drive first and disconnect the power cable. Then disconnect the IDE ribbon. Reverse the process with the new drive, then mount it.

If you've already got a couple of drives without mission critical data on them, you could try this. I doubt if it would damage the drives as long as you're careful. I'm not sure how Linux gets the drive's parameters, but I would guess that it can get them during the mounting, perhaps with a few command-line options if needed.

hot-swapping

[mosch]

I've had great luck with hot-swappable drives! The trick is to take your IDE devices and run over them with a large vehicle. Now make an emergency requisition of SCSI or FibreChannel devices, and all will work exactly as you were hoping.

The correct procedure...

[Wakko Warner]

...is to buy a SCSI RAID card and a hot swap SCSI enclosure.

If you try this kind of shit with IDE, prepare for Deep Hurting.

Sometimes (and I know this is going to really upset a lot of slashdroids) you need to spend money to get certain features.

- A.P.

From lkml

[OrenWolf]

"read a recent man page for hdparm and you will see kernel allows remove/add ide interface. scripts with correct parameter usage are in contrib directory of hdparm source. IDE maintainer has code to electrically turn off (tristate) ide channels on most PC ide chips, but is waiting to demonstrate at an industry conference before releasing to public." -- Jeremy Jackson

Warning!

[afidel]

Most IDE drive trays are NOT rated for hot swap, and neither are the controllers on the motherboard. To do ide hotswap the best way is an ide raid controller from either 3ware, Promise or Adaptec along with certified disk trays.