Dell Inspiron 8600 - Hot-swapping the bay.

[Steven Haigh]

On 06/02/2006, at 1:48 AM, Steven Haigh wrote:

> 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.

After testing this, I've lodged it as BZ #180161.

--
Steven Haigh

Email: netwiz at crc.id.au
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