Best hardware to mirror IDE drives under FreeBSD?

Nikolas Britton nikolas.britton at gmail.com
Mon Jun 27 02:31:47 GMT 2005


On 6/26/05, Mark Bucciarelli <mark at gaiahost.coop> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Jun 26, 2005 at 10:53:47PM +0200, Björn König wrote:
> 
> > Even most cheap ATA chipsets have hot-swap capabilities.
> 
> I didn't know hot swap was possible with software raid!
> 
> How can I tell if the ATA chipset on my system has hot-swap capability?
> 

It's an electrical issue not software/firmware/chipset. When you do
this you run the risk of damaging the motherboard, the drive, and/or
the power supply. There are ways you can mitigate this, for example a
real hot-swap cage etc., but like I said, the ATA bus was never
designed to do this. Short out the +12v and/or +5v  to ground on your
PSU and see what happens. Does it have a protection relay circuit?,
you better hope so! It's easier then you think to accidentally short
one of those two wires to gnd, I've done it a few times. Want to try
your luck with 40 pins?


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