Can you install an SSD into a running machine?

Without downtime?
will that damage the SSD or something in the computer?

talking about Samsung PM951 SSD PCIe/NVMe into a MSI Titan GT80 SLI

 

Hot-plug PCI-Express is reserved for high-end server motherboards, and even then it's not always guaranteed to work. At best, the system will not detect the drive. At worst, it will bluescreen, possibly corrupting your other data. Don't do it.

 

Makes sense

 

FWIW, the SSD module is blank, no data on it.

 

SATA also says that its hot pluggable, every time I tried that in desktops and laptops, they either shutdown, or freeze and need an hard shutdown.

 

I've never had that problem o.0

My desktop case (FT03; and a friend's CM) even has slots for hot plugging SATA devices, and both of us use said ports quite a bit. The pins of a sata connector (power and data connectors; to be specific, the traces) are different length to help facilitate hot plugging, since the ground connectors are longer to ensure they always hookup first.

 

I only tried to do that with dying HDD's to recover data, tried it like 4/5 times, never worked, so I never tried that again, the oldest laptop was some sandy bridge, and the most recent laptop/desktop was skylake base, I know that it should work, but maybe the fact that those where usually half dead hdd's didn't help.

 

There technically is a hot plugging option in the BIOS that may have to be enabled, but like most people (and likely you as well!) I've moved onto USB-SATA bridges. It's much more convenient and portable, even if 3.5" HDDs still require an external 12V source (most of my external SATA stuff is with 2.5" HDDs, which run off of 5V and are easily powered by many modern USB ports).

 

Always play safe with hardware. If something goes wrong, its pain in the ass to find out which part is faulty...

 

I am in exactly that situation where I might need to do that. I attempted to install Linux onto one of the SSDs, PCIe. It makes the system unbootable. My BCD entries disappear, there is something on that Linux SSD that deletes them and its own Grub bootloader takes over.

Is the Samsung PM981 resilient enough so that the power surge won't destroy it?

I need to format that drive but if I insert it, it not only makes the system unbootable but all the other drive entries disappear from BIOS and cannot be added!!

 

If all else fails, you could get a small msata/pcie ssd m2 case which will allow PnP support when plugged into USB.

 

Why dont you create a bootable usb drive with gparted, mount that ssd, boot into gparted, nuke the ssd partitions, format it, and presto. No need for live plug of anything.

 

I will try that.

 

It worked wonderfully. Thank you. Quick simple and elegant and it worked. THANK YOU. Exactly what I needed. What a neat tool.

I just have to figure out how to multiboot Win10 and any flavor of Linux on this UEFI machine.

 

My preferred way is to install the OS to a drive that is the only physically attached drive, then install all drives when I am done and use the firmware to select the boot device during POST. But, I have no problems with GRUB handing things off to Windows using MBR disks. GRUB always plays nice with Windows boot loaders for me. (The opposite is not true.)

Works fine for me with Legacy or UEFI. I get more consistent results and prefer using MBR over GPT for bootable volumes. I only use GPT for drives that are too large for MBR.

 

That's the best approach for me as well.

 

I figured out what my problem was. You have to assign the EFI partition a letter. CD into that drive and into EFI folder and delete all remains of whatever version of Linux was installed. That's what caused my error.

 

Yes, that is why I like to install any OS with the only the drive it will be installed onto connected. Then nothing can go wrong and one OS is never dependent on the other OS's boot manager. So, remove all drives, install Linux. Remove the Linux drive. Install the drive for Windows, then install Windows. Then install all drives and during POST press the key for your BIOS boot selection menu and choose the drive for the OS you want to load.

 

I did that and it didn't work well, since Linux decided it is the only drive in the computer and created the boot manager for itself.

 

If the system is not hot-swappable the connection will send a surge spike and your system will either fry or kill instantly as the PS detects Voltage Overload and will shutdown to protect itself and the system. So turn off and plug in the SSD or hardware and then power backup. Then time lost unless your making money every sec isn't worth a DEAD PS or Motherboard or Drive. Doesn't matter what type of connection sudden connection to Live Power will send your PS to Thermal Overload and if it isn't a HQ PS then your chances of damaging goes through the roof and the damage will come back to bite.

 

Understood, this has been resolved. I was able to insert the SSD in the shutdown mode. It had a faulty EFI that has been fixed.

You can close this topic.