Removable drives in XP

How do you make a drive removable in Winxp? I can see the option for it in the properties, but it is blanked out and all I can select is write caching enabled. I got a removable drive bay enclosure thing but it doesn't exactly work (it freezes Windows if I remove the drive blah blah) and I can't find any way to enable the drive as hot-swappable.

vet

uhm...

don't pull that drive out again while the computer is on again. if it's IDE, you can't make it hot swappable, period.

be thankful your drive isn't broken.

Okay, cool. This wasn't for me, but for my friend who I just had a big argument with (apparantly). I told him the same thing you told me and he got all pissy saying that IDE is hot swappable because the box his removable bay came in said so.

Hmm...

no, it's not hot swappable. that's why the ide device detects when your system boots.

scsi is a different story.

Thanks, I'll let him know.

Oh, er, one other thing, hold on a sec...

He linked me to this:

http://www.startech.com/ststore/itemdetail.cfm?product_id =IDEPRODRWRBK

"Read the last sentence on the product explanation. I'll cut it out for you:

<< The drive can be hot-swapped, providing it is not a boot drive and the operating system is configured to recognize the drive as a removable drive. >>

So there is proof sort of that you don't need a special motherboard or controller card or drive for that matter to be able to have a hot swappable rack."

I was pretty curious about this too. I know StarTech is a pretty respectable company, not like the generic no-name brand his removable bay came from. So why would they make a hot-swappable IDE drive bay if IDE isn't hot swappable?

I'm not trying to be argumentive, I'm just curious (and now) confused. :)

hmm well googling around leads me to believe that windows does not have built in support for IDE and that some sort of special software needs to be run on the OS before it can do it.

even then, your friend should know better than to just yank the drive out while it's running. even if something is hot swappable, it still means the drive has to be spun down and ready to be removed. you can't just yank it while it's going.

so yeah, i was wrong about ide itself being non-hot swappable. :)

Doing so requires it to be listed on an IDE RAID controller, thus forcing it to be recognized as SCSI and hotswappable.

The big thing to note, is the swapping can only be done with drives that are the same. You cant take a 20gb drive out and plug a 140gb drive in and PooF it works. The BIOS still has to see the drive and identify it before it will work correctly.

Yanking a drive out while powered on, not a good idea. Plugging a drive in while there is still power attached the the chain, stupid idea.

thanks for clearing that up candy :)

So you were technically right Invar. ;)

Thanks guys.