Internal Hard Drive shows up on Safely Remove Hardware

[geokilla]

I updated my NVIDIA drivers for my M2N-E today. The update went flawlessly. Before the update, my internal hard drive wasn't in the Safely Remove Hardware window. Now after the update, it is. Am I fine leaving it like this or is there a way to fix this problem.

 

[Varun]

It's fine. If you want to get rid of that you can remove the Nvidia IDE drivers and use the Windows ones, but you can just hide that icon if it bugs you.

 

[Zepper]

The new SATA chipsets support hot-swap (and eSATA), so your hard drives are seen as removable by Windwoes... The drawback is the Write Caching feature of windows gets grayed out. Anyone know how to get Write-caching back for drives that are attached to controllers that support hot-swap but are never going to be swapped or removed? Enquiring minds need to know...

.bh.

 

[Matthias99]

The new SATA chipsets support hot-swap (and eSATA), so your hard drives are seen as removable by Windwoes... The drawback is the Write Caching feature of windows gets grayed out. Anyone know how to get Write-caching back for drives that are attached to controllers that support hot-swap but are never going to be swapped or removed? Enquiring minds need to know...

...go into Control Panel/System/Device Manager, select the drive, re-enable write caching (uncheck "optimize for quick removal")? I'm not even sure if it is disabled by default if the 'removable' device is the system drive, since it won't actually let you remove it.

 

[Zepper]

Thanks for the reply Matthias, but I see no such option in Dev Mgr. I'm running Win2k.

.bh.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Zepper
Thanks for the reply Matthias, but I see no such option in Dev Mgr. I'm running Win2k.

.bh.

Is the device listed under "Disk Drives" in Device Manager? If you go into the properties page, what is on the "Disk Properties" panel? My drive isn't removable, but on my Win2K box there is a checkbox for write caching there.

 

[Roguestar]

As was mentioned, if it's SATA this is normal.

 

[Zepper]

Matthias,
. As I said at first, the Write Caching option is Grayed Out because Windwoes thinks it's a removable drive - can't do anything with it.

.bh.

 

[geokilla]

In Device Manager, I opened disk drives and saw my hard drive there. I opened the properties, and under policies, optimize for performance is checked and not optimize for quick removal. It also says that I can remove the hard drive using Safely Remove Hardware.

In the General tab, the location of my hard drive is Location 0 (Primary ATA Channel). Does this mean that my hard drive is running as SATA? I do not see anything about SATA in device manager.

 

[Zepper]

Open your case and look. It's hard to tell if you don't know what your hardware is. If you buy a box of chocolates like Dell or HP, you don't know what you have unless you look. Or you can run a program like Belarc advisor (free download from Belarc.com) and maybe it'll tell you.

.bh.

 

[geokilla]

My computer is custom built, but I didn't build it since I don't know how to put a computer together. I will open the computer when I have time. But, Device Manager should say something about my hard drive being SATA right? I have only one hard drive, so it is not running in RAID or anything like that.

 

[Zepper]

Mine says my drive is SCSI, but any drive on an add-on controller is called SCSI by Windwoes. I'll hook one up to my mobo's SATA controller and see what it says.

.bh.

 

[geokilla]

I just noticed that in Device Manager. I can't even check enable the Write Caching feature. Guess I'll just go back to my old drivers.

EDIT: I removed the IDE drivers like what Varun said and now my hard drive is off of the Safely Remove Hardware. Also, Write Caching feature has been re-enabled. Thanks guys.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Zepper
Matthias,
. As I said at first, the Write Caching option is Grayed Out because Windwoes thinks it's a removable drive - can't do anything with it.

.bh.

..Bizarre. It must be something the NVIDIA drivers are doing, since it is possible -- at least in WinXP -- to have removable drives that still have write caching enabled.