XP Pro mounting SATA drive as removable

[shud]

WTF? Is there any way to tell Windows that this will never be ejected and to stop putting it in that list?

 

[Continuity27]

There's no downside. All current SATA controllers support hot-swap, and Windows is just informing you that it's capable. I'm sure theres a way to remove the icon, but why mess with what isn't broken?

 

[Startled Armadillo]

I understand how you could move other hard drives in and out, but what would happen if you were to accidentally tell windows to remove the drive containing the OS like this? would it even let you? I haven't been willing to "try it and see" but it is one of those things I have just been curious about lately.

 

[Continuity27]

Originally posted by: Startled Armadillo
I understand how you could move other hard drives in and out, but what would happen if you were to accidentally tell windows to remove the drive containing the OS like this? would it even let you? I haven't been willing to "try it and see" but it is one of those things I have just been curious about lately.

If you tell Windows to remove a drive, you'd have to actually unplug the data cord and re-plug it back in. Impossible for IDE drives, but very doable for SATA, that's hot swap, you can add drives while the computer is on. You'd have to double click on the icon and deliberately click on a specific drive and remove it though, it's not really prone for accidents.

NOTE: Don't do this if you're using the molex 4 pin power connector! This is meant for the special Serial ATA power connector, which offers more pins just for the purpose of hot swap, to protect the drive.

 

[Continuity27]

Originally posted by: Startled Armadillo
I understand how you could move other hard drives in and out, but what would happen if you were to accidentally tell windows to remove the drive containing the OS like this? would it even let you? I haven't been willing to "try it and see" but it is one of those things I have just been curious about lately.

Oh wait, didn't read it properly.. you said the OS drive.

Heh... now thats a good question, and not one I can answer at the moment, doing too many important things to possibly go off a while. 😉

 

[Startled Armadillo]

I'm not planning on actually doing this at all...was just curious what would happen. The reason I ask is that my mobo supports hot swapping, and I currently only have 1 SATA drive installed (and therefore this is the drive that contains XP). I was wondering what would happen if I were to deliberately tell the computer to remove this drive. Again, I don't want to or intend to do this...it's just a "what if?" question.

 

[Startled Armadillo]

Oh wait, didn't read it properly.. you said the OS drive.

Heh... now thats a good question, and not one I can answer at the moment, doing too many important things to possibly go off a while. 😉

haha, yeah, that's why i'm asking...i'm not willing to actually try it out and see what happens...i was hoping someone else would know the answer. I would hope it would just give you an error or something saying that hot swapping that drive is not allowed.

 

[Continuity27]

Originally posted by: Startled Armadillo

Oh wait, didn't read it properly.. you said the OS drive.

Heh... now thats a good question, and not one I can answer at the moment, doing too many important things to possibly go off a while. 😉

haha, yeah, that's why i'm asking...i'm not willing to actually try it out and see what happens...i was hoping someone else would know the answer. I would hope it would just give you an error or something saying that hot swapping that drive is not allowed.

"The Device 'WDC WD740GD-00FLA1' cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later."

This happens when any drive is busy, you must wait until you're not writing/reading in the case of secondary drives, and you can't disable the OS one at all.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Startled Armadillo
I'm not planning on actually doing this at all...was just curious what would happen. The reason I ask is that my mobo supports hot swapping, and I currently only have 1 SATA drive installed (and therefore this is the drive that contains XP). I was wondering what would happen if I were to deliberately tell the computer to remove this drive. Again, I don't want to or intend to do this...it's just a "what if?" question.

Possibly corrupt your OS install.

 

[Continuity27]

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: Startled Armadillo
I'm not planning on actually doing this at all...was just curious what would happen. The reason I ask is that my mobo supports hot swapping, and I currently only have 1 SATA drive installed (and therefore this is the drive that contains XP). I was wondering what would happen if I were to deliberately tell the computer to remove this drive. Again, I don't want to or intend to do this...it's just a "what if?" question.

Possibly corrupt your OS install.

No it won't. 😉 I already tried it, it simply does not let you.

 

[corkyg]

Ha, ha! I have exactly the other problem! My SATA drive is actually in an external case, but connected to the mobo's internal SATA port, and XP Pro insists it is NOT removable, so I can't disable write caching (grayed out) and it gives me grief with Delayed Write Failures on occasion.

If I could get it to be listed as "removable" - I could solve that problem easily. 🙂

 

[shud]

Wow, thanks for the info. This is actually pretty cool, I didn't realize they were hot swappable.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Continuity27

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: Startled Armadillo
I'm not planning on actually doing this at all...was just curious what would happen. The reason I ask is that my mobo supports hot swapping, and I currently only have 1 SATA drive installed (and therefore this is the drive that contains XP). I was wondering what would happen if I were to deliberately tell the computer to remove this drive. Again, I don't want to or intend to do this...it's just a "what if?" question.

Possibly corrupt your OS install.

No it won't. 😉 I already tried it, it simply does not let you.

Its a "what if" question, also, I said "possibly".