hot plugging eSATA

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
| Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:04:45 -0400
| Subject: Re: [TLUG]: How do you expand a RAID5 Array?

| AHCI controllers should support hot plug, although I have seen one case
| where a hotplug caused another drive on the controller to momentarily
| disappear, which didn't please the raid at all.  I suppose having hot
| swap cages makes it more reliable.

Thanks for this clue.

I tried hotp lugging eSATA on my machine (HP Pavilion a6245n desktop
with Intel G33 and ICH9R chipset).  It didn't seem to work.

I went to the BIOS and found
	Advanced: SATA1 controller mode [IDE]
	SATA2 Controller [Enabled]
I switched to
	Advanced: SATA1 controller mode [AHCI]
and the SATA2 line disappeard?!?

I rebooted and hot plugging worked.  At least kind of.

Lessons:
- all SATA controllers support hot plug
- generally only in AHCI mode
- some (lots?) of BIOSes have setting that sets the mode
- the default setting may be IDE or ATA preventing hot plug
- the reason might be that some versions of Windows don't come whith
  AHCI drivers.
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