ARGH! Hard drive showing up as removable!!??

[jez006]

I've just reinstalled windows. I've had this problem before but I can't remember how I fixed it... any ideas?

All 4 hard drives are showing as removable and can be disconnected by clicking eject!!

Better performance and write caching are enabled under the policies tab for each hard drive.

Thanks,

Jez

 

[sub.mesa]

So what is the problem?

Hot-swap is a feature of Serial ATA controllers; and you're using native AHCI drivers. Thus you get this feature.

 

[jez006]

You can't be serious!? It's so annoying! Hot swap is not a feature that I am interested in can I turn it off?

 

[RebateMonger]

It might help if you can provide the motherboard make/model, the SATA disk controller being used, and what disk controller drivers are being used.

 

[Nothinman]

You can't be serious!? It's so annoying! Hot swap is not a feature that I am interested in can I turn it off?

Having 1 extra icon in the notification area is really that big of a problem for you?

 

[Elixer]

Having 1 extra icon in the notification area is really that big of a problem for you?

He can even 'hide' said icon.

 

[jez006]

Having 1 extra icon in the notification area is really that big of a problem for you?

lol its not a big problem, just something that i haven't really seen before.

The motherboard is an asus rampage formula:

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=MyJtSWUgzptSqKFN&templete=2

I have just done a clean install of windows 7 professional, and have not installed any motherboard drivers yet (i made another thread about this).

I know what you mean when you say i can hide the icon but when i put in a memory stick it would be nice if it was the only removable drive showing

 

[FishAk]

You can always just do like tweakboy, and stick a small piece of black tape over the icon.

 

[sub.mesa]

If you really don't like this feature, then disable it by setting your SATA controller to legacy/IDE/emulation mode instead to native SATA/AHCI mode. Then you won't have hot-plug capability as well as no NCQ. For most HDDs this won't matter much in speed, though.

For SSDs you would want to enabled AHCI as it enabled NCQ which benefits SSDs particularly.

 

[RebateMonger]

You can always just do like tweakboy, and stick a small piece of black tape over the icon.

I got around this by hiding my taskbar and using a photoshopped desktop background with the "safely remove" icon crossed out.

 

[jez006]

hmmm. so anyone that has an ssd with ahci enabled in their bios will experience this? i don't want to sacrifice performance of the ssd to get rid of the icon!

 

[Voo]

hmmm. so anyone that has an ssd with ahci enabled in their bios will experience this? i don't want to sacrifice performance of the ssd to get rid of the icon!

Why not just hide the poor little icon? xX *just can't see why that'd be a problem.. at all* It's a little extra feature with absolutely no downside, nobody coerces you to actually use it.

 

[sub.mesa]

Well it is not very convenient that Windows lists your system disk and other HDDs in these, without making distinction between something like a USB pendrive which you would want to 'safely remove' before pulling it out, to avoid corrupting its filesystem.

IMO Windows should list only true removable devices in there, and make another interface for detaching harddrives and internal optical ATAPI drives, for those who want that functionality. But most home users wouldn't be interested in that, only to safely remove their USB pendrive; which the feature was originally intended for. They just re-used their existing mechanic for the new SATA hotswap functionality, which may not have been a good idea.

 

[Nothinman]

Well it is not very convenient that Windows lists your system disk and other HDDs in these, without making distinction between something like a USB pendrive which you would want to 'safely remove' before pulling it out, to avoid corrupting its filesystem.

IMO Windows should list only true removable devices in there, and make another interface for detaching harddrives and internal optical ATAPI drives, for those who want that functionality. But most home users wouldn't be interested in that, only to safely remove their USB pendrive; which the feature was originally intended for. They just re-used their existing mechanic for the new SATA hotswap functionality, which may not have been a good idea.

It's on par with most Windows features, somewhat useful but with glaring holes that are usually very annoying.

 

[Wolfpup]

You know, I've seen that too, but I can't remember on what hardware/software combinations.
Thankfully it's not showing up on either my notebook nor desktop running Windows 7 (both with Core 2 Intel chipsets running Microsoft's drivers with Seagate drives).

But I know I have seen it before...

 

[Voo]

Well it is not very convenient that Windows lists your system disk and other HDDs in these, without making distinction between something like a USB pendrive which you would want to 'safely remove' before pulling it out, to avoid corrupting its filesystem.

So I'd have to go to yet another option to remove my eSata HDD?
MS flushes the drive cache so how would that corrupt the filesystem? In my system the systemdisk doesn't appear in the list, so not sure if that's just by chance or not.. if not I agree that they should remove that particular disk, because it makes absolut no sense to remove that - but other HDDs? I wouldn't be happy at all about that.

@Nothinman: Yeah, nothing compared to the simple elegance of scanning sys/class/../ and so in linux

 

[Nothinman]

@Nothinman: Yeah, nothing compared to the simple elegance of scanning sys/class/../ and so in linux

I can't remember the last time I touched anything under /sys directly, there are userland tools to handle that for me.

 

[sub.mesa]

So I'd have to go to yet another option to remove my eSata HDD?
MS flushes the drive cache so how would that corrupt the filesystem?

External drives can be used in two modes (actually any drive, but let's not make it more complicated):

- Write-through (forced flushes; 'sync')
- Write-back (delayed flushes; 'semi-async')

In Write through mode each alteration is (should be) followed by a flush command, that forces the changes written to disk before other data may be written; the sequence of I/O needs to be guaranteed; i.e. there may be no writes at a point until the sync is complete; otherwise if a power surge/disconnect happens at that stage you would have filesystem corruption. NTFS filesystems have some resilience, but you don't want to disconnect your disks this way as one time you won't be so lucky.

So shortly said write-through is safer but slower, write-back is faster but riskier. If you want to disconnect your disk; there may still be dirty buffers in the RAM and also in the HDD buffer as well that have not yet been committed to disk. Lost data is not that bad, but if you get problems with metadata you could lose large parts of a filesystem.

I'm not sure how it works in Windows, but i can remember properties for an external drive, giving you the choice between:

- optimize for quick removal (= write-through/SYNC mode)

- optimize for performance (= write-back/async)

This screen may not display if your externalSATA device is not working in AHCI mode, but rather in IDE compatibility mode.

So indeed be careful about pulling the plug on your external HDD/usb media. Especially if that device is using write-back.

 

[fffblackmage]

hmmm. so anyone that has an ssd with ahci enabled in their bios will experience this? i don't want to sacrifice performance of the ssd to get rid of the icon!

Ideally, AHCI is better, but IDE mode isn't much slower. The SSD is still waaaaay faster than any HDD.

 

[Voo]

So shortly said write-through is safer but slower, write-back is faster but riskier. If you want to disconnect your disk; there may still be dirty buffers in the RAM and also in the HDD buffer as well that have not yet been committed to disk.

Yeah I know what write through/back are (oh all that fun with cache coherency protocolls), but in that case it's completely uninteresting, because if we remove the drive with the menu point and not just rip it out, windows WILL flush the drive cache and write everything in memory back to the drive. So the only problem would be if the HDD lied to the OS about flushing everything and in this case NO option will ever help and you've got a flawed drive to begin with.

So no, I don't see why removing an eSata drive is any more dangerous than a USB stick.

@Nothinman: Yeah and you could also use some tool in windows for that if you wanted, but claiming that the standard OS version is so much easier to use and better thought-through is a bit off
And I'm personally just used to useing my little scripts, so I'm fine with it..

 

[Majic 7]

If you use the latest Intel drivers that icon disappears. 9.6.0.1014 are the latest on Intels web site, I think. They are what I use.

 

[sub.mesa]

Yeah I know what write through/back are (oh all that fun with cache coherency protocolls), but in that case it's completely uninteresting, because if we remove the drive with the menu point and not just rip it out, windows WILL flush the drive cache and write everything in memory back to the drive. So the only problem would be if the HDD lied to the OS about flushing everything and in this case NO option will ever help and you've got a flawed drive to begin with.

So no, I don't see why removing an eSata drive is any more dangerous than a USB stick.

It is not, as long as you remove them safely via the Safely Remove hardware systray icon. The whole purpose of that mechanic is to flush all dirty buffers to disk, and also detach the disk so no new dirty buffers can queue up. This makes it safe to disconnect the drive, from the perspective of the filesystem. On Linux this would mean unmounting the filesystem before you are allowed to detach the drive.

Usage of the 'Safely Remove' icon is not really needed if the device is operating in "Optimize for quick removal" (sync) mode, but it is very much required for "Optimize for performance" mode; which i think your eSATA disk will set itself to, by default.

But i was assuming the discussion was about how bad it would be if you pull your eSATA/pendrive disk without using the 'safely remove' icon. My answer is that it depends on the mode the external device is running.

Normally not that bad since unlike USB sticks, most people don't detach their eSATA drive very often. But also a bad USB cable can corrupt your filesystem, if you run it in performance mode and the connection drops due to the bad cable multiple times; that could be devastating to the filesystem.

 

[coolVariable]

Ideally, it should give you an option whether you want to allow a disk to be removable.
It makes sense for eSATA or external disks but not for C:\

 

[sub.mesa]

And it also lists internal optical drives running in AHCI/ATAPI mode. Those you probably would want to hide as well; except external optical drives.

 

[jez006]

If you use the latest Intel drivers that icon disappears. 9.6.0.1014 are the latest on Intels web site, I think. They are what I use.

Problem solved! Now my C drive doesn't show as removable! Thank you.