Re: DE and hot-swap disk caddies

[Jos Hulzink <josh@stack.nl>]

On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, Erik Andersen wrote:

> Ok.  How about my laptop?  I have an ATAPI zip drive I can plug
> in instead of a second battery.  It is the only device on the
> second IDE bus (hdc).  In windows there is a little hotplug
> utility thing one runs before unplugging the zip drive.  In Linux
> I currently have to reboot if I want the ide-floppy driver to see
> the device...  I'm willing to bet that Dell has done mysterious
> stuff to make the electrical part work.  It would sure be nice if
> I could ask the ide driver to kindly re-scan for /dev/hdc now.
>
> Is whatever windows is doing when I hotplug my zip drive somehow
> unsafe, such that supporting the same functionality on Linux is
> somehow a Bad Thing(tm)?

Erik,

I can't say from here. My guess is that the chipset has an extension to
the ATA standard that allows hot plugging. Your CDrom behaves like a
normal IDE device, which doesn't mean it is one :) For your hotpluggable
device support, we'll need info about the chipset your laptop uses, and
the cdrom drive. Maybe Dell is willing to help us out here.

Jos