Can I Hotswap My Hard Drives?

[ObsidianObelisk17]

Hello, I was wondering if I could hotswap hard drives reliably without having to worry about data corruption? In this case, I have an external dock, a Thermaltake BlacX Duet, and I have already swapped some drives while my computer was running with no issue as of yet. The hard drives are nothing special, just generic Seagate or Western Digital drives, no SSDs or hybrid drives. None of these drives have pagefile, or act as the system disk. None of the disks are mirrored, have multiple partitions, or are part of a RAID array. I would be using these drives for loose files and games. These wouldn't be attached to a network or used for automated backups. The dock has a button to turn both of the hard drives off, but I wasn't sure if that would be something that you would press after the computer is off. I am running Windows 10 64 bit.
I am decently experienced with computers, I have been building computers for several years now, and have used computers since I was a child. If you have any technical questions, feel free to ask, I should understand them.
Thanks

 

[ThatVietGuy]

If you do disconnect a drive while the computer is on, just remember to eject the drive first. Otherwise, continue on with whatever you're doing since you haven't run into any issues.

 

[ObsidianObelisk17]

If you do disconnect a drive while the computer is on, just remember to eject the drive first. Otherwise, continue on with whatever you're doing since you haven't run into any issues.

I would do that, but the drives are picked up as if they were internal hard drives, and don't have the option to be ejected. The Windows Disk Management (shows up in search as "create and format hard disk partitions") gives me the option to "disable" the drive, which I would assume is the closest I can get to ejecting it, unfortunately.

 

[ArtPog]

Your Thermaltake BlacX docking station is, as I'm sure you're aware, simply a USB external "enclosure" that accommodates two drives. As such, there should be absolutely no problem utilizing different drives in a "hot-swapping" environment with that device.

We do this more or less routinely using various (different) USB external enclosures. While we ordinarily don't utilize docking stations (they're generally not our preference because of their bulk) the concept remains the same. (We rarely even use the "Safely Remove Hardware..." icon when switching from one USB external drive to another USB external device. But please understand we don't recommend this to other users).

Actually, the term "hot-swapping" is generally employed with respect to internally-connected drives. All of our desktop PCs are equipped with mobile racks containing removable drives, so we make it a point to Enable the hot-swapping BIOS setting (usually referred to as "hot plug") to accommodate our removable drives system. This way we can change drives "on-the-fly" as it were. That BIOS setting is not relevant to a USB device, e.g., your Thermaltake docking station.

So you should experience no problem in your objective.