Set hard drive as a removable drive 2

[Deuce199]

I have a AMD 1.0ghz running windows XP pro. I also have a Hot swappable Hard drive bay. In Windows 98 is was necessary to set the hard drive as removable in the hard drive properties in device manager, for the hot swap of the drive bay to work right.
I have read it can be done in windows xp, but I can't find out how to do it. Any ideas of how to make the hard drive removable in winxp pro. The setting in win98 is not available in winxp properties.

Thanks ahead of time for the effort.

A+, Toshiba Associate Technician (Laptops), Dell Certifed Technician (Desktops, Servers, Laptops)

 

[bcastner]

Before trying to go further with your question:

. Is the drive really hardware hot-swappable, or just a drive cage that makes it easy to stick IDE hard drives in and out? The buss should be Scsi, RAID, USB or firewire and not just chained to the IDE buss.

. Is it okay to let Disk Management reformat the drive in this instance? Or is this a case were there is no reasonable backup of the drive contents?

 

[Deuce199]

This drive bay is on the ide chain - it is hot swappable for win98 by changing the settings in system properties - this was taken out of winxp, I know it can be done, I just can't figure out where the setting is in winxp. Alls this does if set the driver to be a removable drive and then the drive can be removed and inserted like a floppy disk.

Disk management has formated the drive and I use it for everything I do to the drive.

I just need to find a way to do this. It is very annoying to shutdown the system everytime I need to swap drives.

Thanks,

deuce199

A+, Toshiba Associate Technician (Laptops), Dell Certifed Technician (Desktops, Servers, Laptops)

 

[bcastner]

Cannot be done under XP. Sorry.

 

[bheilbrun]

To the best of my knowledge there is no setting for a removable drive in xp, but, I do know that if you do have a hot swapable drive you can remove it with the computer on and swap drives with no problems. That's one advantage of xp over 98, no configuring nescessary. This will work as long as they are not on an IDE chain.

Briton

 

[bcastner]

The setting is 'Optomize for Quick Removal', and is under the Policies tab of the drive properties sheet.

 

[linney]

Is this one reason why you will have to Shutdown?

323760 - Programming of Transfer Mode Speed Is Not Supported by Atapi.sys When You Hot or Warm Swap Drives

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;323760&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[Deuce199]

Bheilbron - yes there are drives that can do it, mostly scsi drives, scsi is built for that. But I don't have any scsi drives and right now don't have the intension of spending more money on a new swap bay.

Bcastner - I will try that when i get home

Linney - This help article is proving that xp can hot swap using ide - all it shows is there could be a problem with it picking the right speed again.

The problem with it is when you pull the drive out it confusing windows and either freezes the systme or does not let it pick up the new drive when replaced with another.

Let's keep on putting our heads together on this, There has to be a way. thanks for all of the help.

Deuce199

A+, Toshiba Associate Technician (Laptops), Dell Certifed Technician (Desktops, Servers, Laptops)

 

[bcastner]

I honestly do not think there is a way to do this.
There are special caddies with software support; some laptops "support" this feature. But in the absence of something special like this I have not seen a general solution for XP and the technical odds are against it.

 

[Mojoman]

There must be a way to do this as I have the oposite problem. When I installed my second hard drive, that had been used as a master by 98 SE, XP Pro installed it as a removable disk. This icon stays on my My Computer desk top even when the disk is not connected. I can't seem to remove it to let it auto install correctly. When I click on the icon with the disk connected, XP asks me to insert a disk. The drive shows up correctly in the BIOS and also in device manager. Yet it shows on the desk top as removable and I can't access anything on it. I can shut down, use it as the master, and it works fine. How do I get XP to recognize as a second hard drive instead of removable?
Mojoman

 

[bcastner]

At a command prompt, type: diskpart, and then press ENTER.
At the diskpart prompt, type: list disk, and then press ENTER.
Record the disk number of the disk that you want to convert to an MBR disk.
At the diskpart prompt, type: select disk n, and then press ENTER.
At the diskpart prompt, type: convert mbr, and then press ENTER.

 

[zinja]

To detect a drive that has been "Hot Swapped", just go to Device Manager and Scan for Hardware Changes. This will pick up the new drive, I would love to find a better method, but that is all I could come up with.

 

[smah]

Just a few days ago someone brought me a couple of 'hot swap' IDE hard drive trays. Brand new in the box there was not documentation. I didn't believe they could really be 'hot swapped' so I did a little research and found

http://www.genica.com/drivers/GN210man.pdf.

For anyone who doesn't want to read it, one of the disclaimers is:

Please note that hot-swapping is not supported under Windows NT/Me/XP.

 

[bcastner]

For member zinja's case I recommended using Devcon.exe, the command line Device Manager tool for win2k/XP to create a batch file to rescan the hardware and PnP services that are running.

It seemed to help. See: thread779-737209

But count me still sceptical that other than some very specialized third-party implementations, hot swapping ATAPI devices is essentially without support in XP.

 

[zinja]

And bcastner is correct. While hot-swapping IDE devices in a "hot-swap" drive tray is officially not supported (yet) in Windows 2K, XP it can be done. The program that he suggested Devcon, works like a charm. It actually seems to work faster to detect the new drive than doing a bus scan from Device Manager. Thanks again bcastner, you get another star from me.

BTW, the place to download Devcon is:

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q311/2/72.asp&NoWebContent=1

I made a batch file to execute the program with the rescan option, and then made a shortcut to it on the desktop.

 

[Mojoman]

Zinja Wrote;"Thanks again bcastner, you get another star from me." Bcastner also gets another star from me! His post, in another area, regarding "Go Back" solved my hard drive access problems completely!I had presented this problem to many of my computer "guru" friends who had no clue what was causing the problem. The soloution came in a matter of minutes from Bcastner. Thanks again for being so helpful to me and many others!
Mojoman

 

[bcastner]

Thank you both for your kind comments. They are worth much more to me than stars.

Best,
Bill Castner


MS-MVP
Windows - Networking