Just fitted a StarTech hot swappable SATA drive bay in my new machine which has a 256Mg SSD as drive C: and a 1Tb WD as drive D: I have removed the 1Tb WD from the case and installed it in the new swap bay and it all works a treat, and gives me a removable D: drive. But! The new bay has a drive activity led on its front panel which I would fit to the motherboard HDD led output, but it is already occupied by the led for the SSD, and works fine. Could I use the motherboard HDD activity output to power both leds? or should I just use the motherboard output for the removable drive? I need to know that the now removable drive is inactive before removing (it says in the manual) or replacing - this is the part I am not too sure about! Even if the led is inactive is it safe to remove the drive? Alan
To clarify the question, what you want is for the LED to exclusively show the activity of the 1tb drive, and not to show any ssd activity?
What chipset/sata controller are you using? For intel RST for example you can set Code: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port#\SafelyRemove which will give you the option to 'eject' the disk like a flash drive before pulling it. Or if you use the storahci driver from the chipset instead of iRST it should do this automatically for all disk but C:\. I am pretty sure I had similar options on some of Marvell controllers as well. I recall the generic MSAHCI driver offered these options too, which you can use that on most sata controllers if the 'proper' driver dosen't offer.
As I am not proposing to remove the SSD while powered up I was hoping to use the motherboard led activity output to tell me that activity had stopped in the D: drive (before removal/insertion of new) but I believe the led shows 'all' HD activity? Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H and I have the drives hooked to the SATA3 6Gb/s connectors 0/1 controlled by the Intel Z77 chipset Alan
It doesn't do it as standard? I have a SATA caddy in the home server, Cost £5 from ebuyer and the activity light works for just that drive on it. I've never know a caddy to connect manually to the mobo HDD indicator light. Normally that's just for your case HDD light.
No, there is nowhere to plug the led into but it is long enough to reach the motherboard position (which is where it suggests fitting) Alan
The motherboard header shows any activity, for any disk attached and is a poor way to know it's safe to remove. You should unmount the drive before removal if you want to be sure. Which I have set up on one of my server, so I can disconnect hotswap disks properly before removal. This is the best and proper way, otherwise the other safe way is to disable write cache for quick removal. Since you have intel ICH sata controller I know this is supported as I mentioned in my earlier post. If you don't have these options show I suggest to install latest chipset drivers using the -overall flag.
