Re: Hotswap IDE?

[Nick Holland <nick_(_at_)_holland-consulting_(_dot_)_net>]

Rod.. Whitworth wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 19:35:03 -0500, Marco Peereboom wrote:
> 
>>There is no such thing as IDE hot swap.  Anyone who advertises that is 
>>providing you with a hack that might or might not work.  There is no 
>>spec for this and as far as I know there isn't one being made either 
>>since the hdd manufacturers want to keep IDE in the low-end space.
>>
...
> 
> Accusys ACS7500 IS hot swap _AND_ does RAID 1 _AND_ works just fine
> with OpenBSD _AND_  has status LEDs that show failure and rebuild
> progress.
> 
> I don't regard it as a backup I'd bet my left on though but it is
> pretty good for (a poor man's) HA HDD and copying the swapped out hdd
> to a real backup is easy with no data changing while the backup runs.
> We use a 3rd drive rotated in every afternoon so that all 3 are used in
> turn to take a backup from.

It is hot-swappable, but I'd not really call it "hot swap IDE", at least
as far as the computer (or the OP or Marco) is concerned.  The IDE
controller on the computer never detects the swap, so it never knows
anything happened.  The issues of swappability is completely contained
to the Accusys box.  And then, yes, it works very well, but that's
because the Accusys box isolates each drive from the other, and isolates
them from the system IDE interface.  There is no reason this strategy
can't work well, and I have a more faith in it than I do unisolated SCSI
hot-swapping (or staying up in the event of a catastrophic drive failure).

Nick.