HDD displayed as a removable disk

Hello

Just assembled my new baby, and I'm having a problem with the drive designations. Here are my specs:

APLUS Case Qubic, Black Midi tower
Fortron/Source Power Supply ATX 350W
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ 1.9GHz Socket AM2 1MB
Corsair Value S. PC5300 DDR2 1024MB Kit w/two matched Value Select 512MB
ECS C51GM-M, nForce410+GeForce 6100, Socket-AM2, m-ATX, LAN, DDR2, PCI-Ex16
Samsung SpinPoint P120S 250GB SATA2 8MB 7200RPM
Sapphire Radeon X1650PRO 256MB GDDR3, PCI-Express
Samsung DVD-burner SH-S182D

The HDD is a SATA drive, and is the only drive on that connection. The DVD-burner is IDE, also the only device on that connection.

Upon boot, the bios check finds the dvd first, and recognizes the hdd second, Don't know if that is related though. In windows mode, the hdd appears in the sys tray as a removable device, which wouldn't be the end of the world if it wasn't for me using mem sticks very often, and I know I will remove the wrong one, one of those days, with a lot of swearing from my part as a result.

What have I done wrong? Can I fix it somehow?

 

SATA hard drives are hot-swappable, which classes them as removable drives. You have done nothing wrong. There's nothing to fix. Just be careful. Any you uninstall will be reinstalled on the next boot unless you physically unplug it first.

 

Mine show up the same way. I just tried to do it, and my board will not let me stop my C : drive. So you should be ok if you accidently try to stop the drive. Since I easily get confused, I usually name the hard drives instead of just going by C : E:... (Main C :, Seagate2 E:, WD Backup F :.

Have fun with your new toy.

E

 

Ok, thanks!

My next question then would be... Is there any way I can disable it from showing in the tray? Even if it is treated as a removable, can't I tell my computer to "forget" about notifying me about it? Must be a setting for that somehow, surely?

 

The only thing I could suggest there, right click the taskbar > customise > select always hide for the hard drive icon.

Works for annoying things I get, like "you have auto-updates turned off" - yeh I know you don't need to constantly remind me!!!!

 

Yeah, I thought of that too, but it would hide it for getting out the memstick and other stuff as well... confused

 

I don't think you can Solange. Sometimes when you get a new baby, it has quirks you do not like! At least with this one you can boot it, and it is acceptable, and you can always upgrade things that are not as good as the other kids. Try that with a real one...

I looked all through the settings on mine and could not find any option to get rid of the SATA drives. Maybe someone else has a solution.

E

 

No it'll just do it for that icon - I have 2 LAN connections plus wireless, I have one LAN hidden but one showing - must be the same in your situation.

 

Yeah, but the "Safely Remove Hardware" only comes up as 1, when double clicking on it, I get a window showing the different drives that can be removed, and the hdd is listed in that window, together with whatever else I have as a removable device at the time.

 

Hiya, Solange! :wave

You might try and check under Device Manager - right click your SATA drive in the device list and then go to the Policies tab, and make sure the top radio-button is un-selected . . . this should remove it from the tray as a removable device. I can't test this because on my system that option is grayed out (mine does not support "hot-swapping).

If that is not an option or doesn't work - are you using the nVidia SATA drivers that came with your motherboard? If you are, that may be what is causing C: to show as a removeable disk.

This seems to happen only in configurations that support "hot-swapping" - as your board seemingly does. Is there some other way to turn off the "hot-swapping" option in your BIOS, just for the SATA drive? Or, you might consider using the native SATA drivers that come with XP - I don't think they support hot-swapping (are you using XP still? I'm not sure about the Vista drivers). Unless you want the hot-swapping function - also, I have no idea if turning that option off will in anyway decrease performance (or increase it, for that matter).

I have two SATA drives in my system, and neither shows up as a removable device. I never saw much use in a hot-swapping config, at any rate, as I never intend to remove the drives, be it off or on.

I hope this is of some help to you, my friend. I don't really know if any of the options I mentioned are viable for you. If I think of anything else I'll let you know.

 

Well, after revisiting this option after a cup of coffee, I see this might not solve the issue after all . . . quite the reverse, actually. Although having the first radio-button selected would seem to hurt disk performance, but remove it from the "Safely remove hardware" que - but it hardly seems worth taking a performance hit for it . . .

Seems like the only other options would be the bios or driver related ones . . . sorry I got that wrong about device mgr.

 

Hello!

Have tried both settings in the device manager, no change. Also looked for a setting in BIOS, but couldn't find it. The problems are, as you said, probably driver related, as the drive didn't show up as removable till after I installed the mobo-drivers. Will see if I can uninstall them without having to reinstall them all again, as sound was not a picnic to get working...

 

Rolled back drivers to the generic windows drivers, icon is gone and everything works like a charm!

Thanks Natakel, excellent suggestion!

 

You are very welcome, my friend. I'm glad it worked for you!

Having a new computer is fun!!