Are the 3.5" drive bays hot swappable?

Hardware
1

Pretty much what the title ask. In the 45HomeLab HL-15 server case, are the 15x 3.5" Drive bays hot swappable?

2

If they aren’t, I’ve been using them wrong! :joy: I’ve had no issues removing and inserting drives while the system is running. I usually partially pull up and then count to ten for the drives to spin down before fully removing.

3

As @rymandle05 noted the drives are hot swappable, but you should be careful as you remove it.

  • Make sure the drive is no longer mounted
  • Make sure the drive is not spinning anymore

One of the podcast the 45 Drives team member made talked about how to handle the hard drive.

4

My drives are held in too tightly by the new metal spring tabs. to remove a drive I’m going to need to grab it with a pair of pliers.

5

For real!? I don’t need any tools to pull out any of the drives. They come out pretty easily with only a little effort.

6

Couldn’t get enough leverage on a random drive in the middle. The drives are notched on the corner, but they’re smooth notches so can’t really grab them. If there wasn’t a drive on one side, then I could get some leverage/friction on that surface and pull it out. I haven’t had to swap out drives a lot, but I ended up removing the metal fingers.

7

Hi All,

The hot swappable capibility comes from the HBA controller itself so it would depend on how you have the drives connected to the system.

Our full-build HL15 systems are fully hot swapable but if someone who builds their own and uses their own hardware might not, just keep that in mind.

5 Likes
8

what HBA do you use to make the hot-swappable?

9

Hi @tdampier, In or enterprise servers we use the LSI 9305-16I HBA card but for the full build HL15 we use the onboard HBA controller which is a Broadcom® 3008 SW controller

1 Like
10

Thanks but are either hot swap capable?

11

Yes both the LSI 9305 and the Broadcom® 3008 SW controller which is also on the motherboard and in this HBA is hot-swappable

12

Thanks for the clarification. I am assuming then if the HL15 backplane is plugged in then the drives plugged into the backplane are hot swappable :slight_smile: