Hi all, just seeing if anyone here had come across this strange issue before... My setup is as follows: Abit NF7S-2 m/b Athlon 2200+ & NForce2 chipset (latest NVidia drivers) Windows XP SP1 Western Digital SATA II 250GB Hard drive connected to SATA 1 connection on board. Weird thing is that Windows treats the drive as if it was a removable device, just as with USB devices ('unplug or eject hardware') in the system tray. Has anyone had this or seen it before? I was advised that drivers on here may sort this...?
Hmm...I'm a bit scared to rely on it for my OS at the moment. I'm 'testing it out' for a bit first before I could trust it. I have a 40GB WD IDE drive as the boot disk. Would be interesting if XP gave such an option to unplug or eject hardware for the system disk!
Mine does. Are you using the nf7-s silicon image controller? if so did you need to jumper the drive down to sata1?
To be honest, i see that quite often. Its just the way Windows handle's that specific sata controller (i think), dont worry
I did think the controller was Silicon Images but am not sure... I didn't have to change any settings or jumpers at all for installation. On the drive itself the jumper is missing.
Am I doomed to live with that icon then? ( I tried enabling RAID in the BIOS, it identified it as new hardware, but if I enabled the primary SATA channel in RAID it disappeared completely... Any more ideas on anything I could try???
its not a bug or a problem. SATA2.0 is hot swappable by default. its part of the SATA2.0 spec. if you have a SATA2.0 controller on your motherboard and a SATA2.0 hard drive, its going to show up as a removable drive. but if you try to remove it, windows probably wont let you. worst case senerio is you have to reboot because you disconnected your master hdd. I have the same thing with my new system and my SATA2.0 drive. so far i havent found a way to make windows not say my drive is hot swappable (other than out right hiding the "safetly remove hardware" icon in the task bar). but know that at least this is 100% normal and that there is no problem with your drive or SATA controller. All changing the RAID to SATA in the BIOS does is tell your onboard SATA controller (probably a Silicon Image controller) is to run in Regular SATA mode or in SATA RAID supported mode. (and thus have to install different drivers in windows for each setting). It wont do anything for the hot swappable feature of the SATA2.0 standard.
I get the same icon/option with my Western Digital SATA drive on an nForce 3 chipset using the nVidia controller, not the Silicon Image.
it doesnt really matter what controller since like i said its the SATA standard. i just figured it was the silicon image controller since he was talking about RAID. Tho the nvidia controller can do RAID aswell. Like i said, i get the same remove hardware icon with my nforce 4 board like everyone else who's board supports SATA2 with a SATA2 drive attached.
Cheers for the replies everyone... If it is the norm of SATA II to feature this then I'll probably disable RAID in my BIOS and go back to using the drive as normal, just as a single SATA connection than using the RAID controller. I did notice that if I flashed my BIOS it would update the NVRAID ROM from 4.2 to 4.9 and wondered if it'd help at all but I suspect not. The auto-hide function on the systray seems to be behaving itself these days and is covering it as an inactive icon. I have actually done 'safely remove hardware' on the drive and after a reboot it does come back again but a bit of a bind if I manage to do it by accident. I think I can just start enjoying all the extra space now, bit worried as the temp (according to S.M.A.R.T.) went to 57C just from a format. I had the drive immediately above the old 40Gig HD so have moved it up so it's directly under the FDD. Benefit I'm hoping is that the FDD wouldn't be releasing heat and I can put my HD cooler I bought today under the drive. Should help case air circulation too hopefully... Cheers again for your advice. Roccer, are you happy with the drive? I'm wondering if the 16mb cache is worth the extra tenner I paid...
the drive is only a week old for me (as is the entire system) but so far i am definately happy. coupled with my memory and processor, everything installs amazingly fast. and it is amazingly fast at finding files too. its not as fast as Raptor drives, but for the price i paid for it from newegg ($115 2 weeks ago) I am more than satisfied. Im actually thinking about purchasing an additional one in a few weeks, maybe with some christmas money i recieved just to further "future proof" the system and storage amount.
