[Techtalk] Hot swap drive?

[Conor Daly]

I'm thinking about a backup solution for my home systems and (given the
unreachable price of decent tape drives) am considering a hard disk as the
store.  One option is a USB based external disk which might be a bit slow at
the actual data transfer bit.  The other option is a removable hard disk
(see "Mobile Rack for Hard drive" in:
http://www.marx-computers.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?product=Storage&cart_id=
).  The question is:

Can I, while up and running, plug in the disk, do 'mount /dev/hdXX
/mnt/point', rsync (or whatever), 'umount /mnt/point', unplug the disk?

Or do I have to power off for the plug / unplug stages?

In other words, does 'hot swap' mean "you can plug / unplug a mounted drive
and all will be fine" or does it mean "you can plug / unplug a drive so long
as it's not mounted at the time"?

I think I know the answer but I thought I'd ask...

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly,                   Please avoid sending me 
Met Eireann, Glasnevin Hill,  Word or PowerPoint attachments.
Dublin 9, Ireland             http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
Ph +3531 8064276 Fax +3531 8064247


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