Dell Inspiron 8600 - Hot-swapping the bay.

[Steven Haigh]

On 06/02/2006, at 1:19 AM, Peter Robinson wrote:
>> I've been trying to find information on how to hot-swap the drive bay
>> on Dell laptops - ala windows style - and still get to use the DVD
>> drive after inserting it while the system is running - and not having
>> the system hang when removing the bay while booted.
>>
>> Has anyone managed to do this? I haven't been able to find any
>> packages in FC's list that seems to manage this at all...
>
> Along this line of thinking what's the status of support for other
> hotplugging of things like docking stations on laptops?

Interestingly enough, I've found the following script:
http://mikehardy.net/linux_latitude_d800/idectl

What it seems to do is use hdparm to disable the secondary IDE  
channel, and reenable it again when you use it. I've found that this  
actually stops the machine from crashing when swapping out the DVD  
drive. This is done by running 'idectl 1 off'. When you are ready to  
swap the drive back in, you insert the drive, then run 'idectl 1 on'.  
This then re-enables the secondary IDE controller, and the kernel  
detects the drive again.

What I have noticed however, is that when the drive is reattached/ 
redetected, DMA mode is disabled. If cannot be re-enabled by using  
'hdparm -d1 /dev/hdc' - so the drive only runs in PIO mode. This  
means performance really sucks.

Does anyone know enough about why this happens to try to hack a  
workaround for this? It would be awesome to get DMA running again  
after a hot-swap-in.

--
Steven Haigh

Email: netwiz at crc.id.au
Web: http://www.crc.id.au
Phone: (03) 9017 0597 - 0412 935 897