I am looking for a program that allows you to hotswap hard disks without the need to reboot your computer.
I have this hotswap bay installed in my casing but I need to reboot my computer each time i do a hotswap, which is why I am looking for a programme to overcome this.
Does anyone have a tested and recommended windows 7 compatible program?
Are you hotswapping your OS drive for a different OS? If so you will always have to reboot! If it's just a data drive... no problemo! You didnt say what type of HDD... PATA or SATA??? SATA should hot swap no problem.
No programs that Im aware of but check out ICY Docks hotswap bays... Welcome to ICY DOCK USA
hot swapping ability depends on the mainboard - some support it, others not. so its not a software you need, though maybe some adjustments to your bios, if the mb supports hot swapping at all.
for this you have to activate the AHCI mode, or SATA AHCI mode or sometimes also called raid mode in your bios (if available) - depends on the mb / bios version.
also under win xp you have to install the raid drivers (hit f6 during installation afair) - newer os should already include this i think
I believe my mobo supports them since the options are available. However, I tried activating AHCI and RAID but both didn't work. Windows 7 didn't load beyond the "starting...".
It may be because my other hdds are not fully data hdds (although I use them for data storage these days) and contain WinXP OSes. Or it may be some other problem.
Edit: To Darryl Licht - Mobo refers to Motherboard. It's an abbreviation.
Last edited by Ravanx; 24 Mar 2010 at 17:09.
Are all your drives SATA, or do you have a mix of SATA & PATA?
Also, please fill in your System Specs, it will help us help you!
What Mobo?
I don't use hot swapping, but my HDs show up as removable when I have the SATA controller set to AHCI mode in the BIOS settings.
However, in order for the system to boot in AHCI mode, drivers have to be installed.
If you installed Win7 with the SATA controller in IDE mode, it's possible to switch to AHCI mode without re-installing WIndows:
Error message when you start a Windows 7 or Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE"
I believe that this depends on the SATA drivers that you have installed, though. I was able to do it when I was using the default Microsoft drivers (my mainboard uses an Intel X58 chipset), but I'm not sure whether it would work using the Intel drivers (form the Intel chipset utility).
Quote