SATA drives appear in "safely remove hardware" list???

[Ron Hirsch]

I just built a new machine, which has 4 WD4000KD SATA drives in it, using an
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe mobo, and the drives are connected to the mobo
connectors for SATA.

I have XP Pro SP2 installed, with all the latest updates.

All is running well.

Strangely, the 4 SATA drives are listed in the "Safely Remove Hardware" list
when that taskbar icon is clicked.

I've heard that since SATA drives are hot pluggable is why they are listed
there. Depending upon whom I'm talking to, either XP PRO, ASUS, or Western
Digital, gets blamed.

But XP seems to be the one most blamed.

I don't like the idea of them being listed there, and I have to believe that
XP Pro is the main culprit. But I can't even find any reference to this on
the MS Knowledge base.

Can anyone shed any light on this, and hopefully a path to get them off that
list.

Thanks

Ron Hirsch

 

[Anando [MS-MVP]]

Hello Ron,

I recently built a system based on the ASUS A8N VM-CSM motherboard and I have used a 160 GB SATA-2
Western Digital hard disk. I have a similar problem as described by you. I am guessing that its not
Windows XP or Western Digital to be blamed, since my friend, who also purchased the exact same hard
disk, (but is not running on the same motherboard) does not face this issue. I am still researching
this topic. Please do post back if you come across something useful.

--

Anando
Microsoft MVP- Windows Shell/User
http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
http://www.mvps.org


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[Don Burnette]

Ditto here. I just built a new system with an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Nforce4
mb, and 2 ea WD 250 gb Sata hard drives. I have the same safely remove
hardware icon as well.

Don Burnette

 

[Ron Hirsch]

Hi Anando,

The only thing I can come up is that there are lots of people complaining
about this.

One way is to hide that icon, but I don't want to do that, as I use lots of
external drives. and the general concensus is that the mobo chip driver is
doing this by making the internal drives hot swappable. And, even if nVidia
came out with a new driver, which would fix that, I'm not sure I'd run the
driver, and possibly mess up other stuff.

I doubt that many people prefer hot swappable internal drives. So why not
make it a user choice?

I believe that MS could readily fix this in a future update/patch, and I
sure hope they do.

It is just plain dumb to list the the internal system drives there.

C'mon MS - get with it!!

Ron

+++++++++++++++++

 

[Anando [MS-MVP]]

Ron,

I dont think Microsoft should be blamed for this issue. I am guessing that the southbridge driver
(nForce 430 in my case) has got to make the SATA drive to look like a removable drive to the OS. In
any case, its not much of a problem and I could live with it.

--

Anando
Microsoft MVP- Windows Shell/User
http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
http://www.mvps.org


Folder customizations
http://newdelhi.sancharnet.in/minku

Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[R. McCarty]

I believe the "Removable" aspect comes from the descriptors for the
drives in the Enum Table, via the Class & CompatibleIDs. For my 2
Hitachi SATA drives, their Enum data is
Class = diskdrive
CompatibleIDs = GenDisk

While my Maxtor External USB has
Class = diskdrive
CompatibleIDs = USBSTOR\Disk usbstor\RAW

 

[Yves Leclerc]

I just built a new machine, which has 4 WD4000KD SATA drives in it, using an
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe mobo, and the drives are connected to the mobo
connectors for SATA.

I have XP Pro SP2 installed, with all the latest updates.

All is running well.

Strangely, the 4 SATA drives are listed in the "Safely Remove Hardware" list
when that taskbar icon is clicked.

I've heard that since SATA drives are hot pluggable is why they are listed
there. Depending upon whom I'm talking to, either XP PRO, ASUS, or Western
Digital, gets blamed.

But XP seems to be the one most blamed.

I don't like the idea of them being listed there, and I have to believe that
XP Pro is the main culprit. But I can't even find any reference to this on
the MS Knowledge base.

Can anyone shed any light on this, and hopefully a path to get them off that
list.

Thanks

Ron Hirsch

Part of the newer SATA standards is allowing the drives to be "hot-swap"
style.

 

[Ron Hirsch]

Yves,

Yes, I understand about the hotswap et al.

But, when will companies learn that not everyone may want the results of
what someone thinks is a great idea. That's like when a new ice cream flavor
is created, and a restaurant decides that it will only serve that flavor.
Good practice dictates to me that the user/customer should be given a
choice.

While I've only done simple programming, I'd be willing to bet that having
an option in the device manager to choose hot swap or not, and get the
drives off the "safely remove hardware" listing would be pretty simple
coding.

So, bottom line, it's up to MS to do that in my book.

Ron Hirsch