Re: Hot Swapping a SATA drive in Windows 2000 and XP.

From: Nathan McNulty (nospam_at_msn.com)
Date: 09/07/04 

Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2004 10:57:42 -0700

Using the ICHR5 chipset on Windows XP MCE (just an addon to
Professional). The motherboard is an ASUS P4P800. Don't need a specific
driver (unless you are talking about chipset drivers in which case I am
using the Intel INF Update Utility 6.0.1.1006 WHQL drivers) since it
isn't RAID and it is just using one of the onboard ports. 

----
Nathan McNulty
Brian Taylor wrote:
> I am in the exact same predicament.  I have 3 low end hand built
> servers where I am using a Promise S150 SX4 controller to run 4 bays
> of a SuperMicro 5 bay hot swap backplane.  Those 4 are working fine,
> but the fifth bay was intended to be used for backup and is running
> off an Addonics EI PCI host controller (based on the SI3112 SATA
> controller).
> 
> When inserting a drive, the safe removal icon does not come up in the
> systray, but when I remove the drive I get the "Unsafe Removal of
> Device" dialog, and sometimes I get the "delayed write failed" dialog.
>  In Windows 2000 Server the "Disble Write Caching" box is unchecked
> and grayed out.  And under Windows 2003 Standard "Optimize for
> Performance" is filled in and both settings a grayed out.
> 
> It was my hope that the people that will be swapping the hard drives
> would not have to log in and mess around, but it looks like in order
> to do that I am going to have to use something like FireWire external
> enclosures for the drives.  That is workable, but it costs more and I
> already have foam lined cases for these drives with their hot swap
> rails, and I really thought this was going to work.
> 
> If anyone has successfully done this please post with what OS,
> controller, and driver you have used because it is driving me crazy.
> 
> Brian Taylor
> 
> 
> Nathan McNulty <nospam@msn.com> wrote in message news:<ekkmINHlEHA.3536@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl>...
> 
>>Dang. I don't know what to do with that SCSI part.  I have no way to 
>>test the scenerio though I do have Windows 2000 Workstation and Server 
>>(any flavor) that I could throw on, it won't matter since I don't have a 
>>PCI SATA Card :(
>>
>>Have you tried a clean install of Windows and go from there?  That would 
>>be my last resort (and make a good ghost image of your current setup so 
>>you can recover it if needed on top of backing everything up).
>>
>>----
>>Nathan McNulty
>>
>>
>>Chris S wrote:
>>
>>>No. In device manager, under 'Disk Drives', if I dbl-click the drive
>>>in question, there are four tabs (this is on my Win2k system at home)
>>>- General, Disk Properties, SCSI Properties, and Driver.  On the 'Disk
>>>Properties' tab, there is only one check box, and it is grayed out -
>>>'Write cache enabled' (it's not selected either, though since it's
>>>grayed out, that could mean nothing).  On the 'SCSI Properties' tab, I
>>>have two choices - Disable tagged queueing, and Disable synchronous
>>>transfers.  Neither are checked, but neither apply to write caching.
>>>And that's it for options.  
>>>
>>>Thanks ! 
>>>
>>>On Sun, 05 Sep 2004 02:18:23 -0700, Nathan McNulty <nospam@msn.com>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Instead of aiming for setting it as Optimize for Quick Removal, are you 
>>>>able to simply uncheck Use Write Caching?
>>>>
>>>>----
>>>>Nathan McNulty
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Chris S wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Just to clarify 'what the original issue is/was', as Len asked ... my
>>>>>goal is to attach SATA drives to my system and use them as removable
>>>>>storage in the same manner, conceptually, as I use my current USB2
>>>>>extrernal drives - I want to be able to plug, and unplug, the drives
>>>>>without rebooting the OS.  
>>>>>
>>>>>To do this, one has to worry about 'write caching', because hard
>>>>>drives that are NOT designated as removable are typically going to
>>>>>have their data cached.  The various settings Nathan refers to
>>>>>('optimize for quick removal', etc) on the 'policies' tab are for this
>>>>>purpose.  Well, with my SATA drives, attached to either an Adaptec
>>>>>(Silicon Image chipset) or Maxtor (Promise chipset) sata PCI card, I
>>>>>don't get those options enabled, even after formatting FAT32.  
>>>>>
>>>>>Further, I did several tests.  I created a small file (test.txt) on
>>>>>the SATA drive, then powered it down; windows XP did not complain;
>>>>>drive letter disappeared happily; powered up; drive letter
>>>>>re-appeared; file not there.  Another test - I copied a folder with
>>>>>333 files in it; verified the 333 files were there on the target (by
>>>>>doing a 'properties' on the folder); powered down the disk; no
>>>>>complaints by Windows; powered up the disk; only about 87 files were
>>>>>on the disk. 
>>>>>
>>>>>I repeated the above tests, but this time, I shut down the system
>>>>>'gracefully', and restarted.  In this set of tests, the files/data
>>>>>were all present. 
>>>>>
>>>>>The essence of the problem seems to be that I cannot control
>>>>>write-caching with my external sata drives. 
>>>>>
>>>>>If I must, I will simply reboot my systems each time, but that really
>>>>>blows my strategy of using SATA is a removable backup medium. 
>>>>>
>>>>>Thanks!

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