T60: Ultrabay: Hot swap of OD works, but not of a certain HDD

Question

post-edit (more precisely asked question)
Hi,
I have a T60 with Windows XP 2002 SP2 as Operating System.
My question is about hot swapping a certain device; i.e. connecting it to running machine.
- When I hot swap an optical drive (DVD Multi by Lenovo (Hitachi)) into the Ultrabay slot, it is immediately recognized by the OS. It appears in the Windows Drive Management as well as in the Explorer.
- In contrast, when I hot swap a 500GB SATA HDD in a 'Leicke' adapter into the Ultrabay slot, the HDD is not recognized by the OS. The HDD does not appear in the Drive Management as a data carrier and the (four) logical drives on the HDD are not shown in the explorer.
(Electrically, the adapter seems to be properly connected: the HDD's and the T60's control LEDs are on.)
However, AFTER REBOOTING the T60 with the Ultrabay HDD ALREADY INSERTED, the Drive Management recognizes the HDD as data carrier as well as the logical drives on it without any problem. Even the correct drive letters appear automatically.
=>> How can I make the OS recognize a hot swapped HDD (in an adapter) as well as an hot swapped optical drive?
Thanks a lot,
rolf
post-edit 2010-12-10 02:20 PM:
I now borrowed a colleague's 320GB HDD (Samsung HM320JI) and used it with the same Ultrabay adapter in my T60 - and the hot-swapping works perfectly... :-)
So, obviously my 500GB HDD (Seagate Momentus 5400.6) is the actual trouble maker. :-(
==>> What can I do at the hard disk, in the OS or elsewhere to make Windows XP accept the 500GB also when hot swapped and not only after rebooting?
(Sorry for my somewhat off-topic questions before, but I didn't expect the problem could be related to the disk.).
old version:
t60: hot swap of ultrabay HDD
Hi,
after succeslessly searching several www places and the ThinkVantage help function for a precise and comprehensible  answer, I hope to find it here. 
I have a 500GB SATA HDD in an ultrabay adapter. I want to be able to (re-)connect it with the running t60 because I neither want it to be plugged in all the time, nor do I want to reboot the t60 for accessing the HDD's data.
(post-edit: I want the Ultrabay device to be handled like an USB device; i.e. I want it to be recognized by Windows XP also when it is inserted AFTER booting)
- Is 'hotSwapping' the proper word for what I want to do?
- If so, how can I find out if my t60 is capable of hotswapping?
- If it is, how do I switch on the function?
Thanks a lot and best regards,
rolf

Answer 1

pommesmann, welcome to the forum,
yes hot swapping is the correct term, you must however ensure you use the "safely remove hardware" - "Hardware sicher entfernen" function of the OS you are using. There is an icon in the task bar; in XP it looks like a pc card with agreen arrow above it, in W7 an usb stick with a white tick in a green circle.
to be absolutely correct, it's not 100% the hardware that is hot swapping capable; the OS needs to support it. Windows OSes since W2K have supported it. Therefore if you have W2K, XP, Vista or W7 your T60 is capable of hot swapping.
you don't need to turn it on, it's there by default with the above mentioned OSes.
Caution. Do not create shortcuts from files / folders on the bay hard drive to your desktop; when trying to "stop" it using the remove hardware function you will get a message that you can't because it's being accessed. Another example is music files on the drive which are linked to albums in media player, this can also cause problems. One that really got me wondering one day turned out to be a file that I had sent as an attachment in an e-mail; as I hadn't closed Outlook Windows thought the drive was still being accessed.
Hope this helps
Andy  ______________________________________
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