Safely Remove Hardware

[depawl]

This is a custom built computer running Vista Ultimate.
Athlon x2 BE 2400 processor, Gigabyte GA-M16P-S3 AM/2 MotherBoard (w/nVidia Chipset), 2 GB DDR2 RAM, Seagate Barracuda SATA drive. After a fresh install of Vista, I downloaded and installed all available Microsoft updates. I noticed there were a couple nVidia drivers on the list, and one of them was for the SATA controller.
After the updates installed and I rebooted, I noticed the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon in the Task Bar. It has my hard drive listed as a SCSI disk device, and gives the option to stop the drive, which I obviously don’t want to do. Is there a way I can prevent my drive from showing in the Safely Remove Hardware box?

 

[firewolfrl]

I had the same update and I noticed the same thing happening on my Vista. I have the Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe motherboard. I am not having any performance issues so I am gonna wait and see what surprises your post is going to bring.
I have a feeling this post is going to get a lot of replies

 

[linney]

I have seen this before in XP, see if you get any clues from these.

Safe to remove hardware issue
thread779-1364401

http://www.xoxideforums.com/hard-drives-optical-drives/52807-how-do-i-remove.html

 

[depawl]

Thanks Linney.
I had seen the first one before, but I don't have that nvata key anywhere in my registry. And the second one says that I basically have to live with it. I had also found another post that said to turn off write caching to the SATA drive, but I tried that to no avial.
I'm just concerned that it would be too easy to accidently select the SATA drive when I'm trying to remove a usb drive. And if I did what would happen? Would my computer just stop?
How would I get it back?
Seems like a bad spot to be in.

 

[linney]

If I was gambling man I'd bet on nothing happening if you tried to Safely Remove any SATA drive, honestly I don't know what would happen.

See if there are any further clues in this, it seems to me that this is a Nvidia problem, perhaps they can help?

http://www.google.com/search?q=HKLM...-au&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

 

[maultier]

I'm going with Linney on this one. I don't think anything will happen. You'd probably get the 'in use can't dismount' verbage.

 

[depawl]

Thanks Linney:
I'll try getting ahold of them.
Dennis

 

[harebrain]

Ooooh... Just try it! Report back! (What's the worst that could happen? Even if you didn't get 'in use can't dismount', it'd flush the cache and stop the drive, which would basically be shutdown state provided you just started up.

I get the opposite problem: USB flash drives that it won't dismount, saying 'in use can't dismount' even though that ain't true.

 

[dilettante]

I get the opposite problem: USB flash drives that it won't dismount, saying 'in use can't dismount' even though that ain't true.

Does it work if you try to "eject" them first via Explorer?

 

[harebrain]

IDK. I'll try it next time and see.

 

[JackPineSavage]

I have a posted response to someone on another forum with a solution that seems to have worked for a similar problem. Here's the link:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winvista/t1195869971

 

[linney]

Has Vista set the drive letters of any hard drives, external or USB, to the same letter as another already used one ie. a mapped network drive, cd/dvd drive, etc?

 

[depawl]

No. The SATA drive is c:, an IDE drive is d:, and the cd/dvd is e:.
No mapped drives or anything like that.

 

[linney]

Actually I mis-posted a reply, I was aiming at this similar thread.

"Safely Remove Hardware" but no USB key
thread1583-1445819

So you still have this problem obviously, have you queried with the hard drive manufacturer, and the motherboard manufacturer, to see if they know of any possible fix?