safely remove hardware icon shows internal devices

[Sheryl]

I just restored my Vista computer and now the safely remove icon is giving
me the option to remove my hard drive plus my DVD drives and all three of
them are internal devices.
I thought this safely remove feature was just for external devices.
Surprisingly enough, I also have a USB hub but that doesn't show up. Isn't
that considered an external device?
Is this icon backwards?
Sheryl

 

[Sheryl]

I'm not sure what SATA means but the safely remove hardware device says
they're all "SCSI."
Is this something different from SATA or is it just another name for it?
And why weren't they listed when Dell had to walk me through a restore once
before?
Did I do something wrong when I did the restore myself?
Sheryl

 

[Michael Palumbo]

I just restored my Vista computer and now the safely remove icon is giving
me the option to remove my hard drive plus my DVD drives and all three of
them are internal devices.
I thought this safely remove feature was just for external devices.
Surprisingly enough, I also have a USB hub but that doesn't show up. Isn't
that considered an external device?
Is this icon backwards?
Sheryl

Some SATA (it's a way to connect the drives to the motherboard or controller
card) controllers are designed to "show" as either an EIDE (often called
PATA) or a SCSI device for backwards compatibility with older operating
systems.

Sometimes there's are options in the BIOS to change this behavior. On my
older computer using an Intel motherboard all my drives show up is EIDE
drives in device manager, with no way to change it. I still get the
performance of the SATA connector, but Windows thinks it's an older, PATA
drive anyway.

As to why your drives are showing up in the safely remove list now when it
didn't before may be due to the system re-loading the drivers when you did
the restore.

If they are SATA, and hot swappable, this is a good thing. It's newer
technology, will give you better performance, and if the need arise, you can
remove the drive(s) (not the system drive though) without powering down the
computer.

Mic

 

[Spanishcat]

Mine are SATA, yet they too (HDD & DVD drive) weren't showing up with the
remove dev option. It does scare me a little considering the only times that
ever showed up was for a camera, card reader or mobile. I really don't like
the idea of accidentally removing the HDD...
The change occured after some updates and a sys restore. But other than me
potentially doing something silly, it doesn't bother me.
I'm curious though, what WOULD happen if I chose remove hard drive?

 

[Michael Palumbo]

Mine are SATA, yet they too (HDD & DVD drive) weren't showing up with the
remove dev option. It does scare me a little considering the only times
that
ever showed up was for a camera, card reader or mobile. I really don't
like
the idea of accidentally removing the HDD...
The change occured after some updates and a sys restore. But other than
me
potentially doing something silly, it doesn't bother me.
I'm curious though, what WOULD happen if I chose remove hard drive?

If it's a secondary drive, it would simply flush the cache and the drive
would become unavailable (Windows will simply wait for you to disconnect
it). It may take a reboot to get it to "come back" as it were, but you
would do no damage.

If you try to remove the system drive Windows will inform you that the drive
cannot be disconnected because it is in use. No matter how many times you
try you will get the same result, it simply won't allow you to remove a
drive that is in use and the system drive is ALWAYS in use.

Mic

 

[dennis@home]

Mine are SATA, yet they too (HDD & DVD drive) weren't showing up with the
remove dev option. It does scare me a little considering the only times
that
ever showed up was for a camera, card reader or mobile. I really don't
like
the idea of accidentally removing the HDD...
The change occured after some updates and a sys restore. But other than
me
potentially doing something silly, it doesn't bother me.
I'm curious though, what WOULD happen if I chose remove hard drive?

If any files are in use it will just say.. sorry can't do this try again
later.
If no files are in use it will unmount it and it will disappear from
explorer.
You won't be able to remove the system drive (usually C as it will have
things like the swapfile and libs open.

HTH.

 

[Sheryl]

Thanks for the reply.
I posted this same question at the Dell site since my computer is a Dell and
from what I understand, this icon is showing those drives because of a
Nvidia driver.