On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Dale <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I got one more hard drive to move over and it is SATA. Question one, can > the new mobo's do hot plugging for SATA drives? I have a plug on the front > of the case and was wondering since it is on the front if they can be hot > swapped or if I need to shutdown then hook it up. If I can hot swap, where > does the power come from? I know the drives I put in the case have a > separate power connection. How's that work exactly? Is that just for > external drives that have their own power? > > I have two dries in here already. One I bought and one that was donated. > This is what hdparm reports: > > fireball ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/sda > > /dev/sda: > Timing cached reads: 6788 MB in 2.00 seconds = 3395.32 MB/sec > Timing buffered disk reads: 328 MB in 3.01 seconds = 109.06 MB/sec > fireball ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/sdb > > /dev/sdb: > Timing cached reads: 6736 MB in 2.00 seconds = 3367.58 MB/sec > Timing buffered disk reads: 324 MB in 3.01 seconds = 107.69 MB/sec > fireball ~ # > > Is that about normal? The mobo is 3Gbs/sec and the drives are too. > Shouldn't they be faster than that? I read at one time that SATA is > basically plug up and it works. Just checking if there is a setting I need > to change. > > Related to the above, in the BIOS, it is set to Native IDE. Should that be > set to AHCI instead? Is that why it is slower than expected? Is that good > to go with Linux as well? I have this set in the kernel and built in as > usual: > > AHCI SATA support > > Let me know if I am somewhat right on anything. Oh, I decided to name the > new rig fireball instead of lightening. ;-) You may notice that in the > paste up above. > > Thanks. > > Dale
The SATA spec allows for hot plugging, so technically yes, but it also assumes the drives are in some sort of container so that power and signals are applied at the right time. The plug on the front of your case is probably eSATA which looks similar but has some small changes. What you want to do is figure out which of your MB SATA ports are eSATA compatible and then run one of those channels to the connector at the front inside your case. Typically SATA drives are converted to eSATA external drives by putting them in a case you can get at most computer shops for < $30 or so. Hope this helps, Mark
