[X4U] is FireWire hot swappable?

[B. Kuestner]

> I don't remember whether Firewire drives are  hot swappable or not.
> does anyone know?

Yes. I'm doing that all the time. Such a relief to do a quick backup  
to an external drive without having to power my iBook off and on  
again just to connect the drive and then another cycle to disconnect  
after the backup.

Anecdote, not a recommendation to experiment: In the early days of OS  
X a friend of mine unplugged his external FW-drive without unmounting  
and in the middle of a copy-job. The OS warned him of the error, so a  
few seconds later he plugged the drive back in again. Sure enough the  
Finder resumed the copy job at the position where it had dropped off.  
Integrity checks later on the data were all okay. Nice, isn't it?  
Those were the days when SCSI and ADB were still well alive among  
standard Mac-consumers. So the wow-effect was even bigger then. But  
once more: That's just an anecdote and not meant as recommended  
practise.

Björn