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    Best way to use an SSD as an external Drive via SATA? (Windows 10/7)

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    • O
      oguruma
      last edited by

      I have two PCs that I use for photo editing/tethered captures via lightroom, and I currently have one SSD. What I would like to do is get a hotswap caddy, so that I can swap between the PCs. I would like to use SATA rather than USB, since USB can be somewhat flaky when doing tethered captures. This means that I would need a way to safely eject the SSD without having to shut the PC down. Anybody familiar with a way to do this in Windows?

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      • D
        divsys
        last edited by

        If you've installed Windows with the SATA in AHCI mode enabled in the bios, you should be able to eject that drive as if it were a USB device.

        I've done that for a few system that use a SATA removable drive cartridge for larger backups.

        The other thing that sometimes works is to "Uninstall" the drive in Windows Device manager, although that tends to be a little kludgier (read "riskier").

        -jfp

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        • J
          jonesr
          last edited by

          @divsys:

          The other thing that sometimes works is to "Uninstall" the drive in Windows Device manager, although that tends to be a little kludgier (read "riskier").

          I take the disk offline in Disk Management. I don't remember if you manually have to bring it online after plugging it in to the other PC. I'm not suggesting this is 100% safe either but Disk Management tends to warn or block if you try to do things like accidently remove a disk while in use or being used for swap for the running OS.

          pfSense AMD64 VGA - Assume latest version.
          Suricata, pfBlockerNG, SquidGuard, squid3.

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