Yesterday I bought a new Western Digital internal hard disk 160GB. I installed XP professional and all worked fine except for one thing. In the system tray it shows the removable media icon, which on expanding shows my brand new HD as a removable media as if it was a thumb drive. It not only clutters the system tray there is a chance that someone while accidently click it to safely remove the media. Which would be very bad as am booting up the system from it. Any idea how to solve this?

 

Not use five question marks?

My gaming rig's HDD is listed as removable at the moment. Worst case scenario, someone does tell the computer to eject it, just hit reset and it should be unejected. Check the 'hide inactive buttons' box on Taskbar and Start Menu Properties to be on the safe side.

 

No there is no setting to disable it in device manager. In "devnode flag" there is a flag which says the device is removable, but I can't seem to change it. Whats the dirty way???

@Tehan
I have enabled that settings you mentioned. (Its default actually) But it is always active probably because hard disk is frequently accessed.

Any other ideas?

 

I'm assuming this is a SATA disk. If it's not, then this post will be mildly embarrassing.

Part of the SATA specs allows hot swapping. If your SATA drive is connected to a SATA controller on the motherboard that allows hot swapping, then that is your problem.

Even if you have had previous SATA drives installed that didn't show up as removable, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong. Many motherboards have multiple SATA controllers from different manufacturers. I know that mine does. Changing where I plug my SATA drives in can make a large difference to data transfer speeds. Even something as simple as driver upgrades and downgrades have changed the ability to hot swap on a SATA controller.

Yeah. Upgrade all of your motherboards drivers. Pay special attention to any SATA chipset drivers if you can find them. You may want to consult your mobo manual to see if you have multiple controllers.

If that doesn't work, and you do have another controllers, then use it.

If your mobo manual says that you have a nvidia nForce chipset, then try this as a last resort.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=612128&r=9558103#r9558103

The usual hacking-your-registry!!!???!? disclaimers apply.

edit: This thread at techpowerup recommends removing a driver.

 

Yeah its a SATA disk alright.

Let me get this straight. You are saying that I need to use another SATA jack in my mobo? There are 4 jacks for SATA cables and am currently using SATA1. Also what was it that you said about speed? Will connecting it on another jack which doesn't support hot swapping lower working speeds?

My mobo is "Mercury PVM4D" if that helps.


Edit: I checked those links you mentioned. After reading them I think I should mention something. At first I couldn't use SATA as booting disk, it showed an error as no disk. Then in the system BIOS I saw an option SATA Mode > RAID. I changed it into SATA Mode > IDE. After that I could use the disk as bootable. Is that what caused this?

 

Its a small possibility. The others will undoubtedly know.

 

Perhaps, but probably not in your case.

No, it won't affect the speed. I was just illustrating that there are differences between SATA controllers (one controller can run a limited number of SATA plugs (2-6 plugs per controller is common)). I have speed differences because I've got an external SATA RAID array - that's not something the average user has to concern themselves with.

It does, and it doesn't. At first I thought Mercury Computer Systems? Wow. But then I realised it was Mercury-PC. Who?

Mercury-PC, the upstanding company that they are, don't appear to have your motherboard listed on their website. They do have a similarly named motherboard: the Mercury PVM4 V3.0, but just because it's one letter off doesn't mean it's close enough that you can use it's drivers.

For starters, the PVM4 V3.0 has 2 SATA ports, whereas you say that your PVM4D has 4 of them.

The PVM4 V3.0's SATA driver will probably work with your PVM4D, but probably is the difference between living with a harmless icon on your taskbar and living without a taskbar altogether.

If you want to go ahead, then you should maximise your research of the odds. Download Gabriel Topola's System Information for Windows and check that the relevant chipsets match eg. If you have the VT8237 Southbridge, then your odds are much better that the SATA drivers will work fine.

Trying the drivers might be alright, but using the wrong BIOS image is almost certain to brick your motherboard.

After skimming the PVM4 V3.0's motherboard manual, it mentioned something similar. Instead of RAID and IDE, try 'disabled'. If that doesn't work, switch back.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes/what you decide.

 

More likely reason, you plugged the hard drive into the eSATA port of your motherboard which supports hot swapping like USB allowing hard drives to be used in such a fashion. Unplug the SATA cable from the motherboard and try another SATA connection. If it doesn't fix the problem, you just have to remove the 'removeable' tick from the device properties on the HDD.

 

Turns out that my mobo is the same as PVM4 V3.0. It is written PVM4D on board and its package, so maybe its the petname or something. About number of jacks, sorry but I confused it with my other pc which has an Asus mobo with 4 jacks. This one has only 2 jacks. My bad.

I tried plugging it in other jack, but no change. So I installed the SATA driver update and it worked! Only thing is that it added its own icon into the taskbar, which I must say I have no idea what to do with. Still my HD is no longer removable. Thanks.

By the way I also downloaded the BIOS update because the current version is so shitty, but how do I install it?

Oh and if you are wondering about SATA mode option of BIOS, it didn't have a disabled option. Just IDE or RAID. Above that there was an option Onboard SATA > Enabled or Disabled--- which as you can guess completely disables SATA drivers.

 

Glad to hear it. That icon is probably some kind of monitoring software. Try turning it off and see what happens.

DON'T DO THAT. I'm pretty sure that the PVM4D and the PVM4 v3.0 are actually different boards. Mercury-PC have quite a few other boards which are labelled 123D and others which are just 123. Obviously the D does indicate a different model of board throughout their range, but the differences aren't consistent.

The second reason not to do it is that the PVM4 v3.0 is still only at BIOS v1.0. They've never released any upgrades or bug fixes. So, even if you could use that BIOS, it'd be pretty pointless to install it. It'd just be the same one as you've already got. Your BIOS version should be displayed at boot time, or in your BIOS settings somewhere. The SIW program I linked to previously can probably tell you your BIOS version as well.

Hmm... the PVM4 v3.0 manual talks about that option as being IDE/RAID/DISABLED. Huh. You can never completely trust manuals anyway.

 

Since you are already talking about SATA drives...

My desktop had a 200GB SATA drive in it, and it was ruined during a storm because lightning hit our lines (and someone had the bright idea to unplug it from the surge protector). Everything else still worked, so I got an older 80GB drive from a friend, and it isn't SATA.

Is there any way for me to get the computer to register that this HD is the "C" drive again? Because I can't install certain drivers with it convinced the main drive is a "H" drive.

Or should I just give it up and buy a new one?