Ext USB HDD appearing as Hard Disk drive instead of Removable Stor

[ragz4ragz]

Hi,

I have a SATA HDD in a SATA enclosure which I use as an external/portable
hard disk using a USB cable. But whenevwe I connect the ext hard disk, it
appears under "Hard Disk Drives" instead of under "Devices with Removable
Storage". The computer anyhow recognises it as a USB device and "Safely
Remove" icon does appear in taskbar. But whenever I use the safely remove
feature the hard disk does not get stooped. I used unlocker tool too. But
still whenever I try safely removing it gives a message "The devcie cannot be
stopped right now. Try again later". Also the device policy is also set to
"Optimize for Performance" which I did manually. Please help me to configure
my USB HDD to appear under removable storage.

Also the USB HDD appears unser "My Computer->Manage->Computer
Management->Disk Management" whereas it should appear in ""My
Computer->Manage->Computer Management->Removable Storage". Under Disk
Management, the USB HDD is listed as a hard disk with "type" as "basic". Also
in graphical view, the USB HDD is shown as "Disk 1" whereas my local HDD is
shown as "Disk 0"

Also there is one more issue. Let it be any kind/make of USB mass storage
device I connect to my desktop via USB, the default policy for all devices
stays as "Optimize for Quick Removal". B'coz of this I am unable to safely
remove my USB storage devcies.

Please provide me a solutionb to these issues.

 

[BillW50]

In ragz4ragz typed on Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:53:01 -0700:

Hi,

I have a SATA HDD in a SATA enclosure which I use as an
external/portable hard disk using a USB cable. But whenevwe I connect
the ext hard disk, it appears under "Hard Disk Drives" instead of
under "Devices with Removable Storage". The computer anyhow
recognises it as a USB device and "Safely Remove" icon does appear in
taskbar. But whenever I use the safely remove feature the hard disk
does not get stooped. I used unlocker tool too. But still whenever I
try safely removing it gives a message "The devcie cannot be stopped
right now. Try again later". Also the device policy is also set to
"Optimize for Performance" which I did manually. Please help me to
configure my USB HDD to appear under removable storage.

Also the USB HDD appears unser "My Computer->Manage->Computer
Management->Disk Management" whereas it should appear in ""My
Computer->Manage->Computer Management->Removable Storage". Under Disk
Management, the USB HDD is listed as a hard disk with "type" as
"basic". Also in graphical view, the USB HDD is shown as "Disk 1"
whereas my local HDD is shown as "Disk 0"

Also there is one more issue. Let it be any kind/make of USB mass
storage device I connect to my desktop via USB, the default policy
for all devices stays as "Optimize for Quick Removal". B'coz of this
I am unable to safely remove my USB storage devcies.

Please provide me a solutionb to these issues.

Sounds like it was first used as a fixed drive (partitioned and
formatted) and then later put in an external enclosure to me. Thus
retaining its fixed disk status. A disk editor changing the disk type
should quickly take care of it on the first sector on the drive (where
the MBR also lives). Although one mistake and the drive can become
unusable.

A second plan that should work I believe would be to wipe out the
partition(s) and to recreate them. This should reset the drive type to
removable. But this also wipes the whole drive clean too. So anything
important, you need to backup.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

This is the strange but normal behaviour.
"Devices with Removable Storage" means a fixed drive with
a removable storage media as an Iomega ZIP drive or a
flash card reader. USB flash drives don't have a removable
media but they pretend to do by having the "Removable Media
Bit" (RMB) set in their device descriptor. It's wrong, it's
a lie, but it's also a fact...
USB hard drives could do the same but usually they don't.
Therefore they are shown under "Local Drives". Microsoft
just missed to change the criteria for ordering disk devices
from removable/fixed to hotplug/non hotplug.

Optimize for Quick Removal or Performance has usually no
effect. The only affected drives are USB harddrives which
are FAT/FAT32 formatted. They indeed get a write cache
when Optimize for Performance is set.

But the policies have never any effect on "Safely remove
hardware" succeeds or not. If there is an open reference
("a handle") on the drive to remove then it fails.

The SysInternals ProcessExplorer may be able to find these
open handles but you need the drive's kernel name to search
for.
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/drivetools_e.html#removal_fails


Uwe