Windows views internal hard drives as external

[whirlednews]

I recently installed a new SSD and when I did I switched the SATA settings in the BIOS to AHCI from IDE before I installed windows 7.

Now for some reason, Windows seems to view all of my hard drives as external, i.e. it shows them all in the bottom right hand corner and seems like it would let me disconnect them.

Does anyone know how to remedy this, do I need to install some new drivers or something?

Thanks

 

[r_manic]

Try switching it back to IDE? Or will the SSD stop working if you do this? It'll be easier for us to help you out if we know what the specs of your system are.

 

[whirlednews]

Did some more searching and found someone from years ago wondering the same thing. Turns out that SATAII hard drives supports hot plug, and so does the SATAII controller, so with this you can dismount the hard drives without powering down the system.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/196553-32-hardware-safely-remove-hard-disk

 

[r_manic]

Ideally yes, but not if the drive in question is the system drive.