Mr.Jason wrote:

> If you spin down a hard disk is it OK to remove it and replace while power
> is on? I suppose not, but please speculate and analyze the events of
> hotswap ordinary IDE disk. Would it make difference if the disk is on
> mobilerack or not?

theoretically there would be little risk to the drive, however let's note
that for an IDE setup, the connector goes to the motherboard and no
motherboard I know of is designed to allow hot swapping of IDE cables.
There are risks to such a strategy, and I note that drive manufacturers all
insist that power be removed by turning off the computer before removing a
drive or installing one.

For drives in situations designed for hot swapping ala firewire and USB, the
risk is a lot less, in fact if you want to swap drives, one of those two
choices is a much better choice, just remember to unmount the drives before
removing them, the OS works a lot better not looking for a now non-existent
drive.