how do i enable hot swap on gigabyte ga-p31-s3l support hot swap

[tyson25]

i have just bought a icydock hot swap , put it in the dvd bay and connected it , just put a brand new 2tb hard drive in it , but under computer management it isnt showing the drive , so i can't format it or anything , i did a google search and says my motherboard is hot swap capable , so help urgently needed on how to activate it , thanks in advance

[redwudz]

You probably need to switch over to AHCI for your drives. That setting would be in BIOS, same place RAID and other drive settings are. But if you didn't activate AHCI when you installed the OS, you would need to make some Registry changes or you will likely get a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death, IE, a system crash) if you change it in BIOS now. If that happens, just switch it back in BIOS, no harm done.

But that drive should have shown in Computer Management when you reboot the PC, even without AHCI activated. AHCI allows hot swapping, just like a USB device.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

Enabling AHCI after the W7 OS is already installed: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/61869-ahci-enable-windows-7-vista.html (You didn't mention your OS, but the process is similar for other OSs.) And make sure you back up your registry before doing anything there as the changes are instant and there is no 'undo' and you can destroy the OS.

[tyson25]

im on windows xp also i installed the hot swap rack before turning power on so i should'nt need to reboot should i , also when booted up i didnt get new devive detected , should i have got that even though i had something else plug'd into that sata connection before ? , then when i booted up pc, i installed the tray with brand new hard drive in , but its not visable in computer management

[tyson25]

ok , rebooted and the drive show'd up and just formated , but how do i now hot swap drive safely using this rack

[redwudz]

Sorry, I was editing the previous post, but from what you say, the drive should have shown up. Do you see it in Device manager? If no for Device Manager or Computer Management, I would plug the drive directly into a SATA cable and power cable and bypass the tray adapter. If still no, go into BIOS and see if it shows up there. I would also try a different SATA cable and check that the drive has power. You should hear it spin up when attaching a power cable to it. It should also get a bit warm after a few minutes.

If all that fails, try a different drive in place of your new one and see if that works. If so, you may have a DOA (Dead on Arrival) drive. Large drives are more sensitive to shocks, so rough handling in transit can damage them.

EDIT: Activate AHCI if you want hot swap capabilities. AHCI Registry setup is different, depending on the OS and the chipset/CPU. Do a internet search for ' enable ahci after xp install ' and you should find the proper method.

[tyson25]

how do i activate ahci with windows xp , is it easy as i'm not really up on this

[redwudz]

It's not so easy, but you can go through this thread: http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=444831

Easier, but a PITA, is to reinstall XP with AHCI turned on in BIOS first. But you would need the AHCI driver, though it is probably in the motherboard disc.

[DarrellS]

I checked the Gigabyte site and it did not show any SATA/AHCI drivers for your board. My friend has a Gigabyte G43 board and it did not come with SATA/AHCI drivers so he bought an e-SATA card to get hot swapping. Your southbridge is ICH7 which cannot use AHCI from what I've read. Only R, M and DH controllers support AHCI.

My Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P and when I installed XP, I couldn't install the AHCI preinstall driver but Gigabyte had a post install driver that worked fine for me. Probably won't work for you though since it's ICH9R.

[redwudz]

I believe DarrellS is correct. I just checked your gigabyte ga-p31-s3l motherboard manual and there is no mention of AHCI in the BIOS SATA controller settings. So if you really want hot swap, then a PCI card may be your only choice.

Or you can shutdown, switch drives and restart.

[MJPollard]

http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

For AHCI-enabled SATA drives, this little utility (HotSwap!) shows an icon in the tray that looks just like the USB "safely remove hardware" icon (except the arrow is red instead of green). It provides the ability to easily use a hot-swap rack with XP. I use it all the time on my rig; works like a charm, and very configurable.