You can hot swap
any disk which can be converted to
Dynamic Disk in Windows XP or Vista; either SATA or even IDE.
Just open the Administrative Tools in control panel, then Computer Management, and under Storage group open Disk Management.
You'll see all your disks listed with their capacity shown graphically.
Your disks are organized with numbers like Disk0, Disk1, Disk3. Right click on the area where you see those labels and select
Convert to Dynamic Disk.
Read any instructions and warnings carefully if anything that won't suit your situation happens duing the process.
Your files will not be deleted by this conversion and nothing will be changed at all. Although this action is completely safe, I recommend to convert only the disks that you need to hot-swap; not all of your disks.
After all why would Microsoft not simply format all the disks as dynamic from the beginning, so that you can hot-swap any disk at any time? And you cannot boot your system from any volumes on the dynamic disk (except from the current boot volume).
Hot swapping an IDE dynamic disk is again done from Administrative Tools (Disk Management) and is simple. I don't remember the exact command but there are commands on the above mentioned menu to activate or deactivate (or stop) the volume.
To hot plug in you simply plug in and scan the disk from Disk Manager menu. I don't remember the exact procedure but you may need to Import Foreign Disk as well.
Look at the menus and try (but with care. READ ANY INSTRUCTIONS) Windows doesn't delete your data without a warning. SO READ!
It looks like a nightmare at first, as you hear speed up sound of the disk while the computer is operating, but as you scan and find your disk you feel a bit relieved.
As you see your files on explorer you feel totally relieved.
Plugging out the disk is a little more work. You have to remove the disk from some menu there. As you can no longer see the disk on disk manager window just plug out.
You'll be surprised how your computer doesn't get hanged by such an operation
Mine does get hanged even by plugging out the Ps2 keyboard.
But thanks to the great programming behind Dynamic Disk.
You may consider buying a hard disk box to easily plug in such an internal disk externally.