Is it safe to pull a drive while is on?

Hi guys.

I’m new in this. I want to build a file server and leave a couple of free bays to insert some random drives and share the files, then pull them out without turning off the server. I was looking for a case with hot swap bays and a dedicate on/off power button for each bay, but I couldn’t find one. So, is it safe to pull a drive while is on? or am I overlooking something here?

Thank you in advance for the help.

Hot swap is really for minimizing downtime when you have the pull a failed drive from a RAID array.

If you’re going to be frequently swapping drives, I’d lean toward an external drive with USB3/TB/etc.

The deeper question is whether there might be a better way to share files that doesn’t involve swapping hardware.