Can I arbitrarily plug in and out SATA cables (coming from DVD and (external) hard disc) into and from SATA slots on the motherboard?
or does this cause hardware damages?
Are thesDVD and external hard discs detected automatically by Win7
or do I have to click somewhere "refresh" ?
Peter
Hello Peter and welcome to the forum
The answer I will give you is that the drive and PC must support hot plugging, You need to select AHCI in the BIOS and the drive must have a SATA power cable (as opposed to the old four pin molex connectors that were used by some of the early SATA drives.)
I have never heard of hot plugging a DVD drive.
So how do you know if I can do it of not? easy answer read the next paragraph
To disconnect a Serial ATA hard drive from the computer when the computer is running, you must first use the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon on the system tray to dismount the drive from the Operating System. If the Serial ATA hard drive is not listed under the "Safely Remove Hardware" function, the motherboard or Serial ATA controller does not support hot plugging and the computer should be shut down and powered off before disconnecting the hard drive.
Except for external SATA my personal opinion is not to do it
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