Can I connect and disconnect a SATA harddrive while my computer is running?

Question

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

I'm not sure it's something I'd try even if everything said it was OK. — ChrisF, Dec 11 '10 at 22:27
There are three things for this to work correctly. **(1)** It must be supported by the drive, controller/mobo, and software (not everyone sticks to the full text of a standard). **(2)** Plug in the power to the drive before plugging in the data cable (*may* not be *required*, but it’s best to have the drive ready when the OS tries to read it—not an issue with SSDs, but still a good idea). **(3)** Configure the drive (Device Manager) for quick-removal instead of performance or(/and) use the Eject/Safely Remove function to flush the cache to avoid corruption (i.e., turn it into a flash drive). — Synetech, Oct 12 '12 at 20:15
If you're gonna be doing this often, a hotswap rack is a convenient way of doing it. I don't know if it connects/disconnects the power/data cables in a specific order, but they're designed specifically for this purpose and will prevent the connectors on the HDD from wearing out. — Lèse majesté, Aug 10 '13 at 04:08
Also, if you can't find SATA drives in "Safely Remove Hardware" in XP, you can use [Hotswap!](http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm), which puts a new icon in your systray and will let you hotswap SATA drives just fine. Just make sure your BIOS supports it and install the latest motherboard drivers in case you're still using the old Intel ICH7 drivers that weren't hotswap ready. — Lèse majesté, Aug 10 '13 at 04:12
In consumer world you can't do this. Check my answer at: https://serverfault.com/questions/690609/in-which-order-do-i-plug-the-sata-power-and-data-cables-for-hotplug/1137222#1137222 — Robert, Jul 15 '23 at 09:07

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 11 '10 at 23:05

15

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.

answered Dec 11 '10 at 23:05

madmaze

4,186
6
34
46

12

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
13

I think “safely remove” is the Windows expression for “unmount”. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Dec 12 '10 at 00:50
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 00:28
Corruptions are very dangerous. In my case I lost the GPT table after 4-5 ejections, I was just experimenting. So better never do so if you have important data on disk. – sekrett Oct 29 '16 at 09:47
But you have to set your BIOS to be able to handle that first, right? Otherwise, what happens? – ahnbizcad Apr 01 '18 at 02:19

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 05 '11 at 05:09

3

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

Go to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/services/

Find 'msahci', click on it and on the right pane, right click the 'start' property.
Change the value to '0'.
Restart your computer (important)! Now you can 'safely remove' your SATA internal hard drive like you do with external hard drives.

edited Jul 05 '11 at 05:09

Gaff

18,569
15
57
68

answered Feb 28 '11 at 18:32

Dhruv Singh

55
1

13

What does this do? Why is it necessary? – AnnanFay May 17 '16 at 00:58
2

It can prevent corruption if a HDD is suddenly removed and Windows was writing to it etc. – Codingale Mar 14 '18 at 07:44
Maybe I've "tweaked" my system in some way that interferes with this but this registry key was already 0 for me and I've never had the option to safely remove any internally connected drives. – nxasdf Dec 29 '22 at 03:08
This is now `storahci` – J. Scott Elblein Mar 05 '23 at 05:02

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 27 '16 at 13:26

2

Yes you can do that. In order to do this, we need enable the hot plug capability in BIOS settings. If it is enabled, then we can add second HDD to computer while running. System will install the drivers instantly and the HDD would be ready for use like a USB drive.

answered Apr 27 '16 at 13:26

Sagar

21
2

I don't have hot plug in my bios – giorgio79 Sep 27 '20 at 18:40

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 12 '12 at 20:07

2

I just did it with a 2 TB SATA 6GB/s hard drive. I am going to try my 3 TB hard drive as soon as I'm done moving data. Just don't forget to initialize in the Disk Mangement window for Windows, then format to NTFS.

Note: I did not hot swap my OS drive as I see that as a bad idea

edited Oct 12 '12 at 20:07

Canadian Luke

24,199
39
117
171

answered Oct 12 '12 at 19:59

Mark

21
1

Can I connect and disconnect a SATA harddrive while my computer is running?

4 Answers4

Linked