A technician is deploying a hot-swappable SATA III SSD drive bay in a desktop workstation. After connecting the drive bay to an internal SATA port on the motherboard, the technician inserts a SATA SSD while the operating system is running, but the system fails to recognize the drive until the computer is restarted. Upon inspecting the system's UEFI/BIOS setup, the technician finds that the SATA controller mode is currently set to IDE compatibility mode. Which action must the technician take to enable native hot-swapping capabilities for the SATA drives?
- Reconfigure the SATA controller mode in the UEFI/BIOS settings from IDE to AHCI.Answer
- BReplace the SATA SSD with an M.2 NVMe solid-state drive, as NVMe is the only storage protocol that supports dynamic device insertion.
- CFormat the SATA SSD with the exFAT file system prior to inserting it into the hot-swap drive bay.
- DClear the motherboard CMOS memory jumpers to reset POST hardware detection routines.
Answer
Reconfigure the SATA controller mode in the UEFI/BIOS settings from IDE to AHCI.
Reconfiguring the SATA controller mode in UEFI/BIOS from IDE to AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) enables native SATA protocols. AHCI provides support for Hot Plug capability (hot-swapping drives while the OS is running) and Native Command Queuing (NCQ), allowing the operating system to dynamically detect newly attached SATA drives without requiring a system reboot.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
SATA Controller Modes (AHCI vs. IDE) and Hot-Swapping Requirements
Estimated Time:1m 30s