SSD and Safely Remove Hardware Oddity

I have recently installed two Intel SSD's to replace my old hard disks and have found a small, worrisome thing. I normally have a WD My Book connected via a front usb port. When I choose 'safely remove hardware', both of my SSD's show up in addition to My Book. Is there any way I can prevent this? I believe I have the latest chip set drivers from Foxcomm installed. Oh, and the Bios is set to use ACHI.

Thank you.

Thanks, Badger 906.

I have no idea whether or not I am using Marvell drivers. Mine came from Foxcomm.

And I can't seem to find the box you mentioned under Computer/Manage/Device Manager. Nothing resembling Storage Controllers appears, much less 'Safely Remove.'

I must be missing something here -- that's not unusual at my age.

Thanks again.

Thank you very much, WHS.

I sure was looking in the wrong place which is what usually happens when I can't find what I am looking for.

However, doing as you suggested did not clear the problem. Both SSD's still appear in 'safely remove hardware.'

Thanks again.

I have the same thing on my PC, which I upgraded with an SSD a while ago. Actually, I used to until just a few days ago.

Your SSD drives appear in the icon because of your SATA controller's hotplugging capability which is part of the AHCI specification and actually allows connecting and disconnecting HDs from the running system (good for eSATA). The icon itself isn't really a problem, just a bit of an annoyance.

Enabling or disabling "safely remove" won't affect the icon, that only refers to whether you can unplug USB sticks etc. without having to explicitly use the safely-remove icon first.

I'm actually pretty sure Windows wouldn't let you eject your OS drive since it's running from it, even if you tried to do so. As for other partitions on the same SSD, I'm not so sure - but even then, an accidental eject wouldn't hurt the data, it would just force you to have to reboot just to see it again (I'm assuming).

When I installed my SSD, I first used the built-in MSAHCI driver and had that icon. A few days ago I installed the latest IASTOR driver from Intel instead (my SATA controller is an ICH7R) and the icon vanished, leading me to believe that Intel's driver is smart enough not to enable hotplugging for internal drives (or just not telling Windows about it).

Corazon said:

I have the same thing on my PC, which I upgraded with an SSD a while ago. Actually, I used to until just a few days ago.

Your SSD drives appear in the icon because of your SATA controller's hotplugging capability which is part of the AHCI specification and actually allows connecting and disconnecting HDs from the running system (good for eSATA). The icon itself isn't really a problem, just a bit of an annoyance.

Enabling or disabling "safely remove" won't affect the icon, that only refers to whether you can unplug USB sticks etc. without having to explicitly use the safely-remove icon first.

I'm actually pretty sure Windows wouldn't let you eject your OS drive since it's running from it, even if you tried to do so. As for other partitions on the same SSD, I'm not so sure - but even then, an accidental eject wouldn't hurt the data, it would just force you to have to reboot just to see it again (I'm assuming).

When I installed my SSD, I first used the built-in MSAHCI driver and had that icon. A few days ago I installed the latest IASTOR driver from Intel instead (my SATA controller is an ICH7R) and the icon vanished, leading me to believe that Intel's driver is smart enough not to enable hotplugging for internal drives (or just not telling Windows about it).

Your explanation fits exactly with my observation. Actually, Windows will no allow me to eject the Windows drive but will eject the second drive. I did it once purposefully and had to reboot to get is back. No big problem as long a I know what is happening.

I will just let things be and not worry about it.

Thanks again.

You're very welcome. :)