MA785GMT-UD2H how to activate the Hotplug feature ?

[ggbgeek]

Dear all,

The user's manual of my MA785GMT-UD2H is silent about the Hotplug feature. I have a SATA plug on front of my PC, and I want to be able to make hot connects/disconnects of SATA HDDs.

I understand that this is the feature that must be activated so I can be sure that it is safe to unplug a HDD, the equivalent of the USB's Safely Remove Hardware.

Thank you,

[absic]

Hi there,

to be able to use hotplug for external HDD's you need to enable AHCI mode in BIOS. This is better done BEFORE you install your Operating System although, if you are running Windows there are registry tweaks to enable this feature if you have installed everything in Native IDE Mode.

The SATA cable from your PC's front panel will need to be attached to one of the SATA ports on the motherboard and your external Harddrive will need it's own external power supply.

[ggbgeek]

Hello Absic,

Thanks for your answer.

Yes, I am in Windows, XP Pro SP3, Native IDE. Any idea where I can find a how-to about these tweaks? I have not find.

Then, assuming I did it and it works : before unplugging a disk, how can I be sure it is safe to do so? I.e., I don't do it before WinXP has completed any delayed write, which would kill my files table. In USB it's easy, there is the Safely Remove Hardware feature. What is the Hotplug equivalent?

Thank you,

[absic]

OK easy question first: When you enable AHCI Mode the drives that can be removed are shown in a similar way to USB devices. You right click on the drive you want to stop and Windows will tell you when it is safe to remove it from the system.

Getting AHCI to work in XP is a lot harder than in Vista or Windows 7 and it is often easier to do a clean install of the OS with the controller set to AHCI and then, using F6 during the Windows install, loading the necessary AHCI drivers from a floppy disk drive.

I'm not sure of a workaround in XP and I will have to do some digging to see if it is possible but hopefully, another user will jump in with the answer before I can post back, if they know how to do this!