"safe to remove hardware" sata drive

[vegoilguru]

I did a new build over the weekend using an Abit NF-M2 nView motherboard and WD 320 gig sata drive. Everything is working fine; however XP Pro is giving me the opportunity to safely remove my sata drive. Any ideas why XP sees my sata drive as a removable drive?

Thanks

 

[Roguestar]

It's normal. This is because SATA drives are hot-pluggable, kinda like a USB drive. IIRC if you install the specific chipset SATA drivers (even though it'll work fine under XP SP2) it will make that go away, if that's what you want.

 

[vegoilguru]

Thanks for the quick reply. If I were to accidentally click on the statement, would it disconnect me from my system (c) drive?

 

[Roguestar]

You'd have to click twice on the correct area. You'd have to accidentally click the icon to bring up the menu, then "remove device blah blah" to disconnect it. And yes, I think it would.

 

[vegoilguru]

I see a lot of "help" topics concerning loading the correct sata drivers, but everything so far is by hitting "F6" when first loading XP and transferring from a floopy. Is there a way to load the proper drivers without having to start all over again? Can it be done through the device manager? I hate the thought of starting from scratch since it seems to be working just fine otherwise.

 

[RebateMonger]

What are you trying to fix? There's no problem with anything you mentioned so far. I'd leave it alone. It's not even a sure thing that Windows would actually LET you remove your System Drive.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: vegoilguru
I see a lot of "help" topics concerning loading the correct sata drivers, but everything so far is by hitting "F6" when first loading XP and transferring from a floopy. Is there a way to load the proper drivers without having to start all over again? Can it be done through the device manager? I hate the thought of starting from scratch since it seems to be working just fine otherwise.

Download the SATA drivers from your motherboard manufacturer's website?

 

[vegoilguru]

Thanks, RebateMonger. To confirm what you said, I just found this statement on the NVIDIA website:

SATA devices are defined as removable devices. All SATA devices will show up in the "safely remove hardware" wizard because NVIDIA supports the SATA Hot Swap function. This is not a problem or bug but by design and is expected behavior. Please note that Windows will NOT allow you to remove a boot drive / system volume within this Windows utility.

 

[Smilin]

You can't "safely remove" unless all handles are closed (wouldn't really be "safe" then would it ). On your C: drive there will always be handles.