Can't hot-swap, but can you "sleep-swap"?

[hayduke]

Anyone know if it is safe and/or a good/bad idea to swap drives out of a MacPro while the machine sleeps, if they have already been unmounted (ie diskutil eject...) ? I haven't tried it, so it may not even allow for the new drive to be mounted. I'd prefer not to shut down when I swap drives which I currently do every few weeks as part of a back-up strategy. Thoughts?

 

[benpatient]

rethink backup strategy.

 

[xUKHCx]

rethink backup strategy.

agree.

If this is a back up strategy why would you deliberately do something risky.

 

[hayduke]

I think my back-up strategy is pretty good. Input always welcome...also an answer to the original question would be great.

I have 6x Seagate 750GB. The machine has four bays. Two of the drives back-up to the two other drives nightly. That way if I muck something up during the day I can just go back to yesterdays backup. I prefer this to RAID 1 mirroring. The remaining two drives are stored off-site, brought in every ~2-weeks, switched into the machine, and the other two back-ups go off-site. I could buy an eSATA enclosure for the two off-site drives, but I haven't done that yet. Hence, they get swapped in and out occasionally, but I was just wondering if you *could* "sleep-swap". I wouldn't do it unless someone *knew* it was kosher.

Is there a better back-up strategy? Can you "sleep-swap"?

 

[theBB]

Use external drives.

 

[hayduke]

Okay. I promise not to ever try to sleep-swap a drive, but for the sake of argument can you? That's all I really care to know.

And yes, when I get around to buying an eSATA controller card and enclosure I'll just go that route...

 

[kebuttke]

sleepswap?

the mac is allknowing. it will not allow such a thing. fear the mac pro!