Hot Swap

[macintouch]

Hello.

Now, I know the Mac Pro is not out of the box compatible with hot swapping the drives.

Is there any possible way you could modify it to allow hot swapping? This is not a necessary feature but would definitely be nice to be able to do. If not now...something in the future?

I believe that the hardware is capable of it, but I don't really know much about this. I dont know whether it's more of a software/firmware/hardware issue?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Hockeypuck]

SATA drives should be hot swappable either way... as long as you aren't pulling the boot volume.

 

[slughead]

SATA drives should be hot swappable either way... as long as you aren't pulling the boot volume.

The internal Mac Pro SATA drives are NOT hot swappable due to motherboard silliness.

It's a mac issue (PCs using this chipset have no problem), so presumably it's firmware or something like it.

There's also an issue in XP of those extra 2 SATA ports not being detected. Obviously, again, Mac problem.

There's no way of fixing this.

 

[product26]

so does this mean that you wouldnt be able to use an esata adapter like this?

 

[slughead]

so does this mean that you wouldnt be able to use an esata adapter like this?

You could use it, but you can't unplug the drives they're connected to. Remember the old external SCSI devices?

Plug them in while the computer is off, and don't unplug them while the computer's on.

By the way, you'd have trouble with that anyway--you need to plug it into the mobo using a 90 degree angled SATA plug.

--edit: I should clarify: you need the 90 degree plug to use the extra 2 ports. The 4 main ports should work with that panel.

 

[madyaks]

There's also an issue in XP of those extra 2 SATA ports not being detected. Obviously, again, Mac problem.

Does that mean that if I have a Mac drive in bay 1, and a Win XP drive in bay 2, and two storage drives in 3 and 4 that XP will not see my storage drives?

 

[slughead]

Does that mean that if I have a Mac drive in bay 1, and a Win XP drive in bay 2, and two storage drives in 3 and 4 that XP will not see my storage drives?

No, all 4 of the 'standard' ports will be detected.

However, there are 2 additional ports (for a total of 6) hidden under the "Front Fan Assembly" in the front of the case.

Those 2 additional ports are not detected when the mac is running XP.

So my 5th hard drive is not detected in XP. The other 4 work great.

 

[electronbee]

Do they HAVE to connect to the SATA controller?

There are USB 2.0 to SATA adapters... then, you could hotswap no problem.

 

[slughead]

There are USB 2.0 to SATA adapters... then, you could hotswap no problem.

it'd be slow though

 

[techster85]

it'd be slow though

yea, it wouldn't be worth the hotswappable-ness (okay so i just invented a new word...) to deal with the large cut in speed, i think it would actually be faster to just have the drive internal, and have to shut down the computer to pull the drives...

 

[slughead]

hotswappable-ness (okay so i just invented a new word...)

You sure did! The word is 'hotswappabilitaneosity'.

Who needs college?

 

[electronbee]

There are also Firewire 800 to SATA/SATAII devices out there. One I saw had an onboard RAID controller and supported modes: 0,1,1+0. And, it was all hot swap. So, if one drive went bad, you could pop a new drive in, and initiate a back-up without any intervention from the Mac itself.

Four drives at RAID 0 would be fast. Even at RAID 1+0 would be fast.

 

[techster85]

You sure did! The word is 'hotswappabilitaneosity'.

Who needs college?

haha so true...more than that...who needs grad school??

 

[moreover]

hotswap using DiskUtility: simply unmount and you're good

I have used Disk Utility to unmount ext SATA drives that were not hot swappable. It's painless, fast and safe. Just keep the Disk Utility icon in the dock

 

[slughead]

I have used Disk Utility to unmount ext SATA drives that were not hot swappable. It's painless, fast and safe. Just keep the Disk Utility icon in the dock

The mac pro has problems with this, according to the documentation.

I use an external SATA controller on another mac for the same purpose. It works as you describe, as well.

However, those controllers are different than the onboard in the mac pro.