Strange "safely remove HDD" problem

[Necroman]

Hi, I've got this strange problem in Windows 7 RTM x64 - all the time when I click the "safely remove" icon in taskbar I can see both my hard drives in there, so it's easy to remove them just by clicking on them. That should not be possible afaik! The system disk couldn't be unmounted just like that. I've seen couple of times, when the second drive with movies and stuff just wasn't in "My computer", sister probable unmounted it instead of her flash drive.
So the question is, how to prevent showing these drives in "safely remove" option? I got the Asus P5K Deluxe motherboard, both of disks are connected to the south-bridge SATA connectors, working in AHCI mode (NCQ is a good thing, right? )
Thanks for any help

 

[nate42nd]

Hi, I've got this strange problem in Windows 7 RTM x64 - all the time when I click the "safely remove" icon in taskbar I can see both my hard drives in there, so it's easy to remove them just by clicking on them. That should not be possible afaik! The system disk couldn't be unmounted just like that. I've seen couple of times, when the second drive with movies and stuff just wasn't in "My computer", sister probable unmounted it instead of her flash drive.
So the question is, how to prevent showing these drives in "safely remove" option? I got the Asus P5K Deluxe motherboard, both of disks are connected to the south-bridge SATA connectors, working in AHCI mode (NCQ is a good thing, right? )
Thanks for any help

Hey, you simply need the chipset drivers for your motherboard. Every new build I do does this same thing until I put the CD in that came with the motherboard. If you don't have the CD, go to ASUS website and download all the drivers. You should be good to go. They will get it handling the SATA controllers and everything else correctly. Good luck.

 

[Necroman]

still

I've already used latest Intel chipset/inf update package, but the problem is still there. That's strange :sarc:

 

[nate42nd]

I'm not a driver expert....in fact it's a weak point of mine, but I do know your problem is present on every ssytem I build until I install the drivers from the motherboard CD. You probably need the driver for the SATA controller. See if you can find that. Find all the latest drivers for ALL of the controllers on your board and that should take care of it. The "chipset" driver is probably not the one that controls the SATA ports. All the best.

 

[bobkn]

On my system, if I have the SATA controller set to AHCI mode, the hard disks show up as removable.

I think that they really are removable, or would be if they were in hot swappable cartridge mounts. (The OS drive can't be removed, as it is always in use.)

 

[whest]

Yes, bobkn your correct, thats what hot swapping is, and its the same on mine.

 

[Necroman]

It's a feature

So it's a feature, not a bug. But the question remains, is it possible to use AHCI and disable hot swapping on system drives?

 

[whest]

No I don't think so - just don't use it thats pretty simple - funny most people want it enabled these days with external hard drives - you can change to sata as IDE in the bios, but you would need to reinstall the OS - as it will BSOD otherwise when you try to boot.

 

[G4nd4lf]

in regards to the last post...

u can change from ahci to ide without fresh instal
and back again... i did it myself through the registry but i do suggest u only do it if u know what ure doing!
but i dont remeber how i did it... the trick was to do it in the registry first then restart then before it boots into windows... get into the bios and change that to ahci... it took no longer than 2 mins to but i cant remember what the reg key was... if u need it PM me as i said going into the registry is for more experienced users... if u dont know what ure doing u will crash ure PC!

 

[Necroman]

True story

It's not because of me, but my younger sisters often use the safety remove feature for removing flash drives an sometimes, they unmount the inner hard drive, true story

 

[G4nd4lf]

i know where ure coming from im afraid someone in my family will do the same thing!... i tried going to the gigabyte website seeing as im using a gigabyte board and it only had drivers for during the install process... as in when it says press f6 to install some driver thing i cant remember what but now... after install... what can i do! ive noticed considerable improvement from the ahci driver and i dont want to go back so... i dont know what to do!