Thinkpads Forum

Does anyone know if you can hotswap the HD caddy out?

In general, you can.
You may run into problems if some process somehow has a lock on the drive, then Windows XP won't allow you to eject it (there is a recent thread about this somewhere here).
Also, if the hard drive in the caddy that you want to insert has a password set, you have to reboot the machine in order for the hard drive to be recognized (not sure if hibernating would be sufficient).

Problem is, I am running XP and Vista, and the 2nd HD is seen fine when I first boot into windows.

I then remove the drive and put the CD drive in, CD drive works fine.

If I remove the CD drive and put the HD in, it doesn't show up.

I goto Disk Manager and it will not show after rescanning, or if it does, it will not initialize the disk.

Never seen this problem unless there is a password set on the HD, which doesn't seem to be the case here as the disk manager sometimes sees the HD. Sorry, can't be of further help.

Is there a password on the disk?

this works for me in Vista, but I make sure to use the Easy Eject Utility ( <Fn>+<F9>), and close any open files/programs/explorer windows first. Likewise, I Easy Eject the optical drive when I'm finished. The hard drive is seen upon reinserting.

Nope, never a real problem. The only issue I run across is it [censored] at me that data writes failed, but there was never any real data being written that I care about... otherwise I wouldn't be trying to swap it out. But as far as recognizing the new drive, sometimes it's instant, other times it takes a few extra seconds. Worst case scenario is that you managed to screw something up and need to put the system to sleep and bring it back up and it works fine.

I am also one of those evil people who doesn't screw around with "eject device" for flash drives, never a problem, not changing my habits till something breaks and proves otherwise.