> > Just for the record (I know this is a reply to an old posting,
> > but...) I've hotswapped a few IDE drives and have had no problems
> > at all. a call to hdparm to spin the drive down, then unplugged
> > it and it worked fine.
>
> You got lucky. One of the problems with most IDE drives is that unless
> the connector is designed for hot swapping, there is no guarantee which
> pins will make/break contact first. It is possible, in some cases, to
> damage hardware because contact is made in the wrong order. If data
> signals are present before the main power or if there are (as there
> usually are) several different supply voltages (usualy two positive
> voltages and one negative), the order that they are applied can be
> important. Connectors designed for hot-swap have pins of differing lengths
> so that the circuits are broken/restored in a known order.
>
> Plan the downtime and swap the drive/cable. What you risk is damage to the
> controller and all drives on the bus. It might work 49 out of 50 times but
> that one time will kick your ass and it might happen the first time you
> try it or the 50th. I know a guy that used to hot-swap drives too. He
> doesn't anymore. Planned downtime is always a LOT better than unplanned.
You could
suspend machine with Gabor's patches, powerdown it, add drive, power
up, restore saved image, rescan drives; telnet connections could
survive this if you are fast enough (<5min).
Pavel
-- The best software in life is free (not shareware)! Pavel GCM d? s-: !g p?:+ au- a--@ w+ v- C++@ UL+++ L++ N++ E++ W--- M- Y- R+- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/