I have recently installed a Rosewill RSV-S5 eSATA RAID array on a Windows 2000 Server. I'm not using any RAID features - it is configured as 5 discrete drives (JBOD).
The system is based on the Silicon Image Sil3726 and Sil3132R5 chipsets, which support hotswap of SATA drives.
There is no problem inserting a drive into the box while it is running. The drive is recognized an comes online as expected, just like a USB drive would. My question is how to "safely" remove the drive. The drives in the RSV-S5 do not appear in the "Safely Remove Hardware" list where USB drives appear.
How can I safely unmount and remove a drive without shutting down the server?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897438.aspx
Use this prog to flush the write cache and then it should be safe to remove it.
(assuming that your sata controller and drivers support hotswap)
I just purchased a license of safelyremove. It works with sata controllers too not only with usb. It's very nice. There is a full trial on the website http://www.safelyremove.com