[GLLUG] Hot Swap an ATA Hard Drive -Another Approach

[Sean]

I use firewire (ieee1394/iLink) for that purpose and mobility. The cases 
are ~30-40 bucks and makes everything pretty portable between machines, 
like my DVD-RW is in a firewire case so i can move it between machines, as 
well as harddrives. 

Firewire 800 is starting to appear, which is 2x as fast as the old 
Firewire which gets rid of some of the limitations in the firewire 
protocal, like you don't have to daisey chain everything, and better 
support for IP/firewire. 



On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, Gary Holbrook wrote:

> Some of the external enclosures are made for internal CDROM drives, which
> should mean that they'll fit a drive cage quite effectively.
> 
> While the idea isn't as nice as high end hardware, it is economical...and
> would provide for mirroring important data.  I actually contrived this
> notion whilst wallowing in thorough disgust at a slew of drive problems that
> I had.  Backups become a problem because the tapes frequently cost nearly as
> much as a second drive would.  This idea permits drive swapping with really
> cheap hardware without rebooting...using some of the fabulous scripts you
> guys posted earlier.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Matt Graham" <danceswithcrows@usa.net>
> To: "gllug" <linux-user@egr.msu.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 4:08 PM
> Subject: Re: [GLLUG] Hot Swap an ATA Hard Drive -Another Approach
> 
> 
> > On Wednesday 19 February 2003 15:27, after a long battle with
> > technology, Gary Holbrook wrote:
> > > I've always wanted to try this with vanilla drives and cheap cages:
> > > Get a 5 1/4 inch external USB enclosure and mount one of the
> > > swappable cages in it.  Then you could use vanilla IDE drives and use
> > > the usb enclosure to make them hot-swap.
> >
> > I don't think this'd work the way you want it to.  The "swappable cages"
> > you refer to *will* make an IDE drive hot-swappable, so long as you run
> > the script Jeff mentioned earlier (on BSD) or the script I mentioned
> > earlier (on Linux) when swapping drives.  USB 1 is too slow for disks,
> > while USB 2 is better, it's still slower than a direct IDE connection.
> > You'll still have to rescan the SCSI bus using a script if you change
> > the drive without unplugging the USB device.  Not to mention that the
> > IDE hot-swap cages you refer to may be too big (many are meant to fit
> > in a 5.25" bay) to fit into the external USB disk enclosures (meant to
> > take 3.5" disks), and weird hardware interactions between the IDE
> > hotswap cage and the USB disk enclosure could take place.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >   "Bother," said Pooh.  "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock
> >   phasers on the Heffalump; Piglet, meet me in transporter room three."
> >      --Robert Billing
> > There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
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> >
> 
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