safety remove hardware

Juno

Lifer
Jul 3, 2004
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i installed a fresh copy of windows xp pro yesterday.

today, i saw a "safety remove hardware" icon and i checked. no usb drives around. i opened it and saw my two hard drives listed on it. now wtf, my hard drives? no way i'm going to "safety remove" it.

how do i get them off the list?
 

Bob Anderson

Member
Aug 28, 2006
188
0
0
Originally posted by: Juno
i installed a fresh copy of windows xp pro yesterday.

today, i saw a "safety remove hardware" icon and i checked. no usb drives around. i opened it and saw my two hard drives listed on it. now wtf, my hard drives? no way i'm going to "safety remove" it.

how do i get them off the list?

------------------------

You probably have two SATA drives.

SATA drives are hot swappable, meaning you can 'safely remove hardware', and unplug the drives with the comp turned on.

If you are never going to do that, don't worry about it.

-Bob
 

Juno

Lifer
Jul 3, 2004
12,574
0
76
Originally posted by: Bob Anderson
Originally posted by: Juno
i installed a fresh copy of windows xp pro yesterday.

today, i saw a "safety remove hardware" icon and i checked. no usb drives around. i opened it and saw my two hard drives listed on it. now wtf, my hard drives? no way i'm going to "safety remove" it.

how do i get them off the list?

------------------------

You probably have two SATA drives.

SATA drives are hot swappable, meaning you can 'safely remove hardware', and unplug the drives with the comp turned on.

If you are never going to do that, don't worry about it.

-Bob

right but these are the drives i use everyday. i just don't want them on the list.
 

btcomm1

Senior member
Sep 7, 2006
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Why don't I have the safely remove hardware then? I have a my windows installed on a SATA.
 

RebateMonger

Elite Member
Dec 24, 2005
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Originally posted by: btcomm1
Why don't I have the safely remove hardware then? I have a my windows installed on a SATA.
It seems to depend on the type of SATA controller chips and their drivers. NVidia-based motherboards seem to often generate this question.
 

absinthe

Senior member
Apr 13, 2000
255
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0
This is so weird. I was coming here to AT to ask this exact question, and this thread was at the very top of this forum.

I also have an NVidia-based board. I originally had only one physical SATA drive with four partitions, and they did NOT show up under "safely remove hardware." This was all put together by the company from which I custom-ordered the machine.

Then I recently added a second physical SATA drive, with just one big partition dedicated to Windows, and reinstalled XP fresh. The older, larger SATA drive now has three partitions. Now, ALL FOUR of those partitions, from TWO physical drives, show up under "safely remove hardware."

I use lots of USB devices and use "safely remove hardware" quite often. I am afraid I'm going to "safely" remove something I really don't want to -- not to mention it really clutters up that menu to have all those drives listed there.

I know there must be a way not to list these since it was that way before.

-abs

EDIT: I was thinking that I'd e-mail support or post in the forum where I bought my computer, MonarchComputer.com, since they obviously set it up in the first place - but it looks like they've gone out of business! :disgust:
 

Bob Anderson

Member
Aug 28, 2006
188
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0
Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Originally posted by: btcomm1
Why don't I have the safely remove hardware then? I have a my windows installed on a SATA.
It seems to depend on the type of SATA controller chips and their drivers. NVidia-based motherboards seem to often generate this question.

Exactly. If you remove the nVIDIA IDE driver in add remove programs, the SRH list and icon will dissapear. In XP, windows will revert to its native IDE driver.

The above is my experience when I removed the nVIDIA IDE driver while troubleshooting a problem last March.

I would say to the original poster to try this, but it would be wise to have your motherboard driver CD handy, or an image of your bootable drive before proceeding.

-Bob