Why are my SATA drives showing in "Safely Remove Hardware"

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

K8N Neo2 with two Maxtor 6B250S0 250GB SATA drives on SATA 1 and 2
XP Prof SP2

Why do these drives show up in "safely remove hardware" in the taskbar?

Beemer

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

> K8N Neo2 with two Maxtor 6B250S0 250GB SATA drives on SATA 1 and 2
> XP Prof SP2
>
> Why do these drives show up in "safely remove hardware" in the taskbar?

Because SATA drives are hot swappable.

Hellraiser.........>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

"Beemer" <Beemer@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:fs80e.3690$Ab.3038@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
>
> "Hellraiser" <hellraiser1.nospam@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:3ab51iF696vj2U1@individual.net...
>> K8N Neo2 with two Maxtor 6B250S0 250GB SATA drives on SATA 1 and 2
>> XP Prof SP2
>>
>> Why do these drives show up in "safely remove hardware" in the taskbar?
>
> Because SATA drives are hot swappable.
>
> Hellraiser.........>
>
> Even if not used in raid or stripe?
>
> Beemer

Whatever the "reason", its pretty stupid.

My 2 drives show as removable, even though they are both part of my raid0
system drive. How stupid is that.

I am sure its possible to change their properties to make them *not*
removable and therefore not appear in the list.... if only I knew which
registry entries to patch. Hmmmmmmm.

Chip

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

"Folk" <Folk@folk.com> wrote in message
news:tue3411t8cs60b4kdms74hrjtkurh2tv71@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 09:09:56 -0000, "Chip" <anneonymouse@virgin.net>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>"Beemer" <Beemer@nowhere.com> wrote in message
>>news:fs80e.3690$Ab.3038@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
>>>
>>> "Hellraiser" <hellraiser1.nospam@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
>>> news:3ab51iF696vj2U1@individual.net...
>>>> K8N Neo2 with two Maxtor 6B250S0 250GB SATA drives on SATA 1 and 2
>>>> XP Prof SP2
>>>>
>>>> Why do these drives show up in "safely remove hardware" in the taskbar?
>>>
>>> Because SATA drives are hot swappable.
>>>
>>> Hellraiser.........>
>>>
>>> Even if not used in raid or stripe?
>>>
>>> Beemer
>>
>>Whatever the "reason", its pretty stupid.
>>
>>My 2 drives show as removable, even though they are both part of my raid0
>>system drive. How stupid is that.
>>
>>I am sure its possible to change their properties to make them *not*
>>removable and therefore not appear in the list.... if only I knew which
>>registry entries to patch. Hmmmmmmm.
>>
>>Chip
>
> I have read elsewhere that the version 4.79 drivers don't have the
> icon, but I haven't actually tried installing them.

Just tried it. It doesn't work - the icon is still there.

Chip

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar (More info?)

Chip wrote:
> EDIT: And I might add, I found the 4.79's don't perform as well as the
> 4.46's either, so I rolled them back out.
>
> (Burst speed down from 238MB/s to 210MB/s and CPU usage up from 6~7% to
> 10~11%)
>
> Chip

And when does a burst speed of 238MB/s actually happen outside of a
benchmark?

Try testing something useful like random seek or sustained transfer.

Ben
--
A7N8X FAQ: www.ben.pope.name/a7n8x_faq.html
Questions by email will likely be ignored, please use the newsgroups.
I'm not just a number. To many, I'm known as a String...

Come on, stop moaning about the test speed of motherboards. Has ANYONE anywhere managed to get their SATA drives out of their "Safely remove hardware" section?

I've tried going through everything I could find in my registry, since the all the fixes I found said to add a DisableRemovable DWORD in my registry in a key folder I don't have. The,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvata or nvatabus

Key / folder. Which doesn't exist in my Vista 64 with ASUS Striker II Formula motherboard.

So far all the "official" Vista responses I heard are,
1) That's normal
2) Just ignore it and for things that are removable just wait a few moments and then pull them out!!

As if that's safe! or that any of us who actually know enough to be fiddling with registry's work That slowly with our computers.

After researching this for some time i have finally found a solution in this microsoft-issued document:
http://download.microsoft.com/down [...] eSATA.docx

I'll try to summarize it here, but take a look for yourself if it's not clear enough:
"To work around this problem, you can disable external SATA support on a per-channel basis by setting the value of the TreatAsInternalPort registry key to 1 and then rebooting the system."

What this actually means is that you first need to find out on which channel your drive is connected, and then set a certain registry value accordingly. Do this by going to Device Manager -> Disk Drives; Right click your drive and click Properties. On the General tab look at Location. There are several numbers here, but i think that only "channel" matters to us. My channel was 0.

Now open your registry (with admin privileges) and go to:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci\Controller0\Channel0 (change the last digit according to you drive's channel).
If this key doesn't exist you're gonna have to create it (I had to create Controller0\Channel0).
Here create a new DWORD value with the following properties:
Value name: TreatAsInternalPort
Value data: 1
Base: Hexadecimal

You can shorten this process by entering the following in the command line:
reg.exe add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci\Controller0\Channel0" /f /v TreatAsInternalPort /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000001

Now just reboot!
This worked for me. Hope it helps.