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I have a SATA hard drive that says it supports hot-plugging. Does that mean I can actually connect it to power and a SATA plug while my computer is running? Would be handy, but seems kind of scary...

Hardware details:

  • Motherboard: Gigabyte, GA-MA790X-UD3P
  • Hard drive: Western Digital, WD10EADS-00L5B1

Or might have been a different hard drive I read was hotpluggable... either way I'm more curious about the theory of it all rather than my specific case :p

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if you have more detail let me know and i'll edit answer – aking1012 Dec 11 '10 at 21:51
I'm not sure it's something I'd try even if everything said it was OK. – ChrisF Dec 11 '10 at 22:27
@ChrisF: That's what I'm thinking too :p – Svish Dec 11 '10 at 22:59
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2 Answers

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As long as its not the OS drive you should be fine, since SATA is "hotswappable" though i have experienced corruptions of the FS once or twice. So i try to avoid it.

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Do make sure you Safely Remove, however. – oKtosiTe Dec 11 '10 at 23:37
I must say i dont remember, usually I only do this on my ubuntu machine and there I just "umount" – madmaze Dec 11 '10 at 23:50
I think “safely remove” is the Windows expression for “unmount”. – Gilles Dec 12 '10 at 0:50
Sounds reasonable. Can't find the SATA drive in the Safely Remove thing though. Maybe have to look somewhere else. – Svish Dec 17 '10 at 21:05
If it is hot-swappable, then even an OS drive shouldn’t be a problem; worst case scenario, just hit the reset button and the BIOS should detect it during POST. – Synetech Jun 19 '11 at 0:28
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up vote 2 down vote

  1. Open your run box, then type regedit and press Enter.

  2. Go to the following key:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/services/

  3. Find 'msahci', click on it and on the right pane, right click the 'start' property.

  4. Change the value to '0'.

  5. Restart your computer (important)! Now you can 'safely remove' your SATA internal hard drive like you do with external hard drives.

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