How to detect when a new SATA drive is inserted using Java under Linux?

Question

I am currently working on a project where I need to bulk import data into a Hadoop cluster. The data that needs to be imported into Hadoop resides on SATA disks. The data that needs to be imported are Encase forensics disks image (E01). I created an application that extract files from these images and import those files into Hadoop, this works fine but I need to start the process by hand.

I want to automate the process by hot-swapping the SATA drives and automatically start the extract process. I wrote my program in Java and it needs to be that way due to some external libraries I use to analyse the images. I searched the internet for a solution where Java is used to detect newly inserted drives but all I found where libraries that can detect usb drive or used udev rules to kick start the a process (I could use that but prefer a Java solution)

Does anyone know if something like what I have described exists? Or does anyone can point me into the right direction? It would be much appreciated!

Almost forgot...I use ubuntu 12.04 Server Edition as my operating system.

Answer 1

udisks is a D-Bus API that provides information (including notifications) on media insertion and removal, and you could subscribe to the notifications using dbus-java.

Alternatively, you could have your Java application listen on a localhost socket and write a udev rule that sent the appropriate event information over the socket.