'Safely Remove Hardware' oddity

[4candles]

Running desktop PC with XP Home.

The 'Safely Remove Hardware' feature works fine, but I'm puzzled as to why, when I click on the icon, the HDD 'C' is always in the list. I've seen several friends' XP machines, and it doesn't happen on theirs. Is there any way to correct this, and would anything awful happen if I clicked on 'C' drive by mistake?

[ChuckFickens]

is it a SATA hard drive (or SATAII specifically if I remember correctly)

if it is then they are hot pluggable so in theory you could remove it "on the fly" which is why it's showing in the safely remove hardware.

wouldn't recommend doing it on your system drive though, at the very least it's going to "hang" your current windows session and you are going to lose any unsaved work you have open.

[rojash]

Yeah, it would be really nice if MS had thought to incorporate a setting "never ask if I want to remove this device".

[4candles]

Thanks Chuck, yeah, I can see what you mean.

Seems a bit odd though. Obviously I'm very careful to avoid clicking on C: drive, but I'd be a bit nervous if it was SWMBO's hand on the mouse, the way she tends to have the pointer wandering 'somewhere in the vicinity' before clicking.

Yes, it is a SATAII - the pointer message says:

Safely Remove SATA MAXTOR STM SCSI Disk Device - Drive (C:)

Just to confirm, then, this is normal on this type of installation?

On reflection - maybe nothing bad would happen anyway, as the C: drive is always in use, and Windows would tell me that 'the device cannot be stopped right now' ?

[rojash]

Being the reckless person I am, I just tried it for you, 4candles, and you're right - Windows tells you that it can't be stopped right now.

And yes, it's normal for SATA drives

[4candles]

Thanks for that, rojash - you're a braver man than I ;>)

[ChuckFickens]

following a little more research into this it would seem that it is mainly a issue that appears on either Nvidia or VIA chipset based motherboards when the advanced SATA controller drivers have been installed.

I have found two "workaround's" for it, but one also disables write caching on the drive, which would have some serious performance side effects and the other is a registry hack, which for such a relatively minor issue it probably isn't worth the risk of playing with the registry.

if you have either a Nvidia or VIA chipset based motherboard keep an eye out for the updated drivers for it, they are likely to fix this quirk in a future release.

[4candles]

Aye, it's Nvidia.

I'll watch out for updated drivers.

Many thanks, Chuck & roj, a virtual medal for both

��� ���