3 sata hd's, 2 ports

[eusair]

i just bought a 400gb seagate NL35.1 sata hd to complement my 2 120gb seagate sata v hd's. i would like to know if there is any reason why i shouldn't hot swap one with another right there amongst all the guts of my machine, without using a drive bay.

ideally, i will have a 120gb hd that i will store rarely accessed data on and plug it in only occasionally (will sit in a desk drawer, otherwise). from my research, i believe that i will have to disable the hd i am removing via the device manager, but i have no problem with doing that, because it won't be often.

after several hrs of google searches, i think i know the answer, but only by inference. can somebody please verify this for me?
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also, if i was to buy an internal drive bay that holds 3 sata hd's, could i run all 3 with my sil3112 controller, even though it has just 2 ports? i think i recall reading that there are drive bays out there that would allow this. but maybe the contoller will not? i don't know enough about that, for it is not what i want to do, yet.

windows xp pro
ga-8inxp mobo
radeon 9800 pro 128mb


thanks for your help.

eusair

 

[Nodsu]

Hotswap has to be supported by your SATA controller, by your SATA drivers and by your SATA drives. If any of these is NHP (non-hot-plug) then you risk serious data loss and/or hardware damage when you go shuffling the drives around.

An external USB-SATA enclosure would be much more useful and convenient.

 

[eusair]

Hotswap has to be supported by your SATA controller, by your SATA drivers and by your SATA drives. If any of these is NHP (non-hot-plug) then you risk serious data loss and/or hardware damage when you go shuffling the drives around.

but i CAN do it under the right circumstances? it is my understanding that ALL sata hd's are hot-swappable. regardless, i know that mine are. my sil3112 r2 supports it too, hence the drivers do as well. is there something special about those enclosures that make them a necessity? as far as i can tell, there is not.

An external USB-SATA enclosure would be much more useful and convenient.

i agree, however, i'd rather not spend the money at this time. after looking around, i have decided that i would rather wait until i can make use of a 3-in-2 internal drive bay. but that would require me to have a 3rd sata port and i haven't decided yet how i intend to get it (new mobo, pci card, etc)

thanks for your time.

eusair.

 

[Nodsu]

No, not all SATA drives can be hotswapped.