nVidia Nforce 4 IDE drivers & SATA II Hard Disks!

[sik1977]

I have two systems both with the MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum which has SATAII support. One system has a Western Digital SATAII 200Gb HD and the other has a Seagate SATAII 160GB HDD.

I installed the nForce4 Mobo drivers (6.66/6.67 WHQL sets) and if I install the nVidia IDE drivers that come with the package, the 'Safely Remove Hardware' Icon starts appearing in the windows task bar and shows the Hard Disks as removable media (though they cannot be removed).

If i subsequently uninstall the nVidia IDE driver (or not install it from the pachage) windows installs its IDE drivers and the task bar icon doesn't appear.

My questions are as follows:

1. Why does the 'Safely Remove Hardware' Icon starts appearing in the windows task bar if I install the nVidia IDE drivers, showing my Hard Disk as removeable media?
2. Is it better to not install the nVidia IDE drivers, I heard that they can cause compatability issues with some software?
3. Is there any advantage to installing nVidia IDE drivers instead of letting windows install the IDE drivers, keeping in view the fact that I have a single SATAII Hard Disk (in each system) & a LiteOn DVD-RW drive (in each system)?
4. Any other useful info?

Thanks a lot for the help.

 

[emogoch]

See my response in the hard drive forum.

 

[utaka95]

NEVER use Nvidia's IDE drivers, they don't improve performance - and can cause tons of other optical drive bugs. Nvidia apparently hasn't rewritten this driver since NF1.

 

[gahleon]

These guys are right. In fact, the NF4 chipset may be fast however, the features suck. Active Armor and Network access don't work either and will greatly mess up features within windows! Plus of course, the IDE interface with SATAII. It is really pathetic that they market these things and don't correct issues. Microsoft x 2! hahahahhahaha.

 

[sik1977]

Thanks to all for replying and clearing up this issue for me.

@emogoch

Thanks for your detailed reply in the other forum.