Why, suddenly, are my hard drives showing up as removable?

[balane]

I reinstall my operating system fairly regularly. Always trying different combinations of things so I've probably installed W7 64 bit off of the same DVD on my main gaming computer probably a dozen times.

Well this time I decided to go from 2 x 64gb Kingston SSD drives in raid 0 to a single OCZ Vertex 120GB. I did this just to simplify things and I didn't really see any usable benefit in the raid set up.

I do a typical OS install and everything goes fine as usual. But I just notice that under each of the drive properties (The other drive is a 1TB Barracuda.) it can now be configured for quick removal and I also have the tray icon constantly there showing these two drives available for quick removal.

This has never been the case before.

I installed Windows on the Vertex using AHCI and I'm using the Microsoft IDE driver as recommended by OCZ. (I did try the Intel driver, it made no difference.)

Computer is in my signature.

So, a few questions;

1.) Are there any negatives to having them being seen as removable? (All settings are under Policies are how I usually have them and Better Performance is checked.)

2.) Any idea why this happened this time and at no other time? What triggers this?

3.) If there are any negatives to this can it be changed so they are no longer viewed as possibly being removable drives?

Thanks for your help.

 

[tweakboy]

Go to device manager ,,, Open up disk drives, and right click properties then policies tab and change it from quick removal to Performance. let me know how it goes

 

[Tsavo]

I get the same thing with AHCI active, but without Intel's raid program installed.

 

[balane]

Go to device manager ,,, Open up disk drives, and right click properties then policies tab and change it from quick removal to Performance. let me know how it goes

See what I'm talking about is that option wasn't even available to me until this install of Windows for some reason.

I already have them checked as Performance but they still show up under the Safely Remove Devices tray icon.

This is the fist time ever that I even had the ability to select them as removable in the device manager, it was always assumed by the OS in the past that they were not removable and no checkboxes were offered for anything else.

 

[balane]

I get the same thing with AHCI active, but without Intel's raid program installed.

So you think installing Windows under AHCI is what's causing this? It could be. I've used regular IDE in the past because I didn't have an SSD and didn't even know about AHCI. I converted my first SSD from IDE to AHCI after the OS was installed following a tutorial on line. Then I installed with RAID and now this time I installed from the start as AHCI.

If it doesn't matter that they are considered as possible removable devices then I don't really care, I would just like to know why it happened with this particular Windows install. I just want to understand is all.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[BassBomb]

they have had enough foreplay and want to start hotswapping

 

[VirtualLarry]

So you think installing Windows under AHCI is what's causing this?

In a word, yes.

 

[Cerb]

So you think installing Windows under AHCI is what's causing this? It could be. I've used regular IDE in the past because I didn't have an SSD and didn't even know about AHCI. I converted my first SSD from IDE to AHCI after the OS was installed following a tutorial on line. Then I installed with RAID and now this time I installed from the start as AHCI.

If you use the "native", "RAID" (native with extra BIOS stuff), or "IDE" settings in the BIOS, you won't get access to hot-swap [without special software]. With AHCI, you have hot-swap and NCQ out of the box, and MS' own implementation is excellent.

 

[bad_monkey]

If you use the "native", "RAID" (native with extra BIOS stuff), or "IDE" settings in the BIOS, you won't get access to hot-swap [without special software]. With AHCI, you have hot-swap and NCQ out of the box, and MS' own implementation is excellent.

Yup...exactly what I would say.