Windows 10: Windows 10 Pro 1903 not working with hot swap

In the BIOS the four SATA ports connected to my two ICY DOC dual [3.5 and 2.5 in each unit] hot swap bays are set with Hot Swap Enabled. I have been having issues with power supply and motherboard, but got that all straightened out. I tested the hot swap with various drives in the various bays in 1803. there are separate power buttons (4). I could put a drive in a bay, turn on the power to that bay, and the drive would show up in the Safe To Remove list with a ding, and show up in File Explorer. I tested 3.5 drives and 2.5 drives, and it all worked as it is supposed to. Silly me, I thought it was all good.


Then just to be safe, I ran sfc /scannow and the 3 DISM commands - all good. So I thought, okay lets upgrade to 1903. I did and all was going okay until I realized I needed to do a data backup to one of the 2.5 HDD in the hot swap bay. I pushed the power button. No ding, no Safe to Remove icon, and when I clicked on File Manage - noting. The system was totally locked up and the only way forward was to turn the power off.


When I restarted with the power to the 2.5 inch HDD still on, it all came up and that drive was available, but still no Safe to Remove icon.


Please understand that I also have another bootable SSD with 1803 on it that I can put into the hot swap bay and boot to it, so I am not stopped from working. All data is on two other physical drives.

:)

 

Windows 10 Hot Swap SATA dock

I just built a new PC with a Thermaltake Overseer RX-I case and an Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark 2 motherboard.

I am running Windows 10 Pro.

I enabled AHCI for the Sata port that the dock built into the case is connected to. I also enabled hot swap for that Sata port only. I can boot up with a hard drive installed and it appears in my device list. I can insert the hard drive after boot up and
it appears in my device list. But I have no way to "Eject" the Sata drive within Windows 10 because it does not show in the list of "Safely Remove Devices".

Previously I used Windows 7 on my old machine and a USB dock. The hard drive would be treated as a USB removable drive and be eligible for "Safely Eject".

What is needed to configure Windows or my Bios to allow for the Sata dock built into the case to be "hot swappable" and able to be safely removed without shutting down the PC?

 

Drive letter assignment to hot-swap drives being forgotten


I have two SATA hot-swap drives that I alternate between each day for backups. When using Windows 7 I was able to assign the disks to g: and then after the initial assignment, windows would remember this and assign it to g: on each subsequent use.

But with Windows 10 it seems to forget the assignment after a reboot, and assigns d: (the first free letter) instead. (Quite possibly this isn't actually related to a difference between Win 7 / 10 though - when using Win 7 I had a drives on d:, e:, f:, and so g: was the first available letter. On Win 10 I no longer have the d: and f: drives attached, and so d: is now the first available letter.)

To be clear:

• The hot swap disks are not permanently attached
• Only one hot swap disk is ever attached at a time
• Both hot swap disks have been assigned to g: (but this isn't sticking)

Anyone have any ideas?

 

Drive letter assignment to hot-swap drives being forgotten

You could create a batch file with diskpart that remove the drive letter and reassigns the one you want.
The drive number n should be last on list.

Initially


diskpart
list disk (to identify disk number)

Batch file e.g. letter.bat contains one line

diskpart /s letter.txt

and letter.txt contains

select disk n (n from above)
remove
assign letter= J (or whatever you want)
exit

and each time you swap drive, just run letter.bat.