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Not all SATA drives support hot-swap. Especially older models do not seem to work correctly and require the system to be rebooted, despite the fact that the controller works well with newer drives.

QUESTION: How do I check if a drive supports hot-swap, without unplugging and plugging it?

I would like to think that it could be achieved using hdparm but I can't find it. Maybe there some other means available? Can someone advise?

Konrad Gajewski
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  • I'm assuming the rest supports hot-swap, it's just the drive that is in question. In other words, some drives work, but some do not provided the rest is unchanged. – Konrad Gajewski Jul 12 '18 at 19:14

2 Answers2

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Since a review of hdparm reveals it does not report what you want to see, search for "hot plug" and "hot swap" in the spec sheet published by the drive manufacturer, e.g., https://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/enterprise-hdd-fam/enterprise-capacity-3-5-hdd/enterprise-capacity-3-5-hdd/en-us/docs/100827320a.pdf. Also check the controller manufacturer's spec sheet if it does not appear as hot-swap compatible here, and the manufacturer of the drive bay hardware, as older drive bays are not always hot swap compatible. Also, please make sure you are either in AHCI or RAID mode in the BIOS Setup, and not in Legacy or IDE emulation mode.

K7AAY
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Be careful because some of the spec sheets are wrong, some of the drives are buggy, some require firmware upgrades, some of the controller interfaces require BIOS settings to make it work, etc.

You can probably rule out a drive as being incapable, but to be sure it will all work you need to test it.

Bill McGonigle
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