John Sutherland <fedora@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > Is there anyway to turn off an IDE hard disk for hot swapping? Yes there is, but it is a bit of a kludge until a bug gets fixed. Alan Cox and others have written code that permits this, and the code is in the FC1 kernel. In theory, all you need to do is: unmount /dev/hdXXX # for all the partitions hdparm -b 0 /dev/hdX # for the whole drive # power down drive, swap, power up hdparm -b 1 /dev/hdX mount /dev/hdXXX /mntpoint # for all the partitions The "hdparm -b 0" command tristates the IDE controller lines so you can remove the drive without damaging the hardware. Of course, the drives should be in caddies so that the powerdown occurs properly. I like the Vipower cages for this. *** HOWEVER ***, there seems to be a bug in the process somewhere (see bugzilla.redhat.com #113693) that fails to upgrade the geometry tables for the drive. So, I end up doing this to restart the new drive: hdparm -b 1 /dev/hdX sfdisk /dev/hdX <control C> # !!! mount /dev/hdXXX /mntpoint # for all the partitions sfdisk seems to know enough to diddle the tables. This is risky, though; one wrong character typed into sfdisk and the drive is repartitioned. I would sure like a better technique, or else have the bug fixed. That said, I have done this dozens of times as part of my drive-to-drive backup scheme ( http://www.keithl.com/linuxbackup.html ) so if you are careful it should work until the bug gets fixed. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom keithl@xxxxxxxx Voice (503)-520-1993 KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs
