Real Simple Computer Question

PolloDiablo

I feel like this should be easy to find the answer to, but for the life of me I can't figure it out.

On windows, there's the button in the bottom right to "Safely Remove Hardware." I use a flash drive a lot, so I'm constantly clicking that and disconnecting the flash drive. My problem is, also on that quick launch menu is my hard drive. I'm constantly worried, because a single errant click would tell my computer to ignore its hard drive, and I'd like to avoid that sort of wackiness.

Is there a way to tell it that I don't want the C: drive on that menu?

RNEMESiS42

I don't understand? An icon for your C drive pops up near the time in the bottom right? Does it tell you you're running out of space or something? I don't think I've encountered this.

Red_Cascade

Not something I have seen before, but a little Googleing brought up this

If it is a sata II drive they are hot plugable which is why it is showing as a removable drive. It will appear once the nvidia chipset drivers are installed.

If you have a Nforce4 Based Motherboard and your sata drives are showing up in Safely Remove Hardware, this registry hack will allow you to fix it.

1. Click Start -> Run
2. Execute regedit
3. Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvata

4. Click Edit
5. Select New > DWORD value
6. Name this DWORD: DisableRemovable
7. Double click this new DWORD and set its value to one (1).
8. Close Regedit and reboot

Never used this registry edit myself, so not sure if it has any side-effects etc, so use at your own risk.

Hope that helps

(P.s. IIRC the "safely remove hardware" for USB drives in XP is just a leftover from 2K and dosn't really need to be used)

Edit 2: Link to where i got the info Here

Edit 3: sorry for all the edits Have you tried to safely remove the HDD to see the results? I susspect it may not let you remove it anyways as it would be "in use", in much the same way you can't format C from Windows disk management.

PolloDiablo

Thanks a lot. I'll give that fix a shot. I'm on Vista x32 if that makes a difference.

I'm too scared to try to disconnect it and see if it even lets me, because if it did I'm not sure how I'd fix that.

Red_Cascade

Well, when you "remove" a USB drive, leave it plugged in and restart the PC it appears again when the machine reboots. I would expect the same if it did remove the HDD (apart from the crash / bluescreen / forced reboot from disconnecting the OS drive)

Anywho... also found this (would give the above registry change a try first though)

Remove non removable drives from the "Safely remove hardware" list

Internal card readers of desktop PCs are usually USB devices. The USB standards define no mechanism which allowes a device to say "I'm internal and not removable". Therefore internal USB card readers are listed in the "Safely remove hardware" facility.
There are also SATA drivers which pretend their internal drives being removable.
As far as known devices are shown in the "Safely remove hardware" list if they are marked as removable and not as "surprise removal is ok".
These are bit coded flags:

From cfgmgr32.h:

#define CM_DEVCAP_REMOVABLE (0x00000004)
#define CM_DEVCAP_SURPRISEREMOVALOK (0x00000080)

The device capabilities are found in the registry in a value named 'Capabilities' under (sample for an USB drive):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\Vid_090c&Pid_1000\A740000000000097
If you take away 4 from the value or add 80h and then refresh the save removal dialog by toggeling the checkbox, then the drive is gone.
But the value is reset when you attach the drive for the next time or on next boot. This is hard coded into the driver and read each time the drive is loaded. If you export the modified value a reg file then you can silently load it on startup like this:
regedit /s hidecardreader.reg
But you need admin previleges to write this value. Under Vista even an admin is not allowed to change the value offhand.

The device instance id string of your drive (this USB\Vid_090c&Pid_1000\A740000000000097 thing) is found in the properties of the drive in the device manager on the 'Details' tab. But XP shows the tab "Details" only when the environment variable DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS=1 is set:
DevMgr_Show_1.reg download and doubleclick the file, then relogon to take effect.

On the tab "Details" under XP the item "Device instance ID" is already selected. Click on the ID in the List and press Ctrl+C, this copies the ID into the Windows Clipboard and can be pasted somewhere else with Ctrl+V.


Meanwhile I've added a function to do this to my USB drive letter manager.

Still, you have to determine the device id, but everything else is left to the USBDLM service.

In the USBDLM.INI set for instance for an USB drive

[HideFromSafelyRemoveHardware] DeviceID1=USB\Vid_090c&Pid_1000

ApexMirage

Honestly as long as you're not actively using any data on the flash stick, you can pretty much just yank it out without having to worry - sure, you're asking for trouble, but it's a hell of a lot less annoying. I've been doing it for years now and have never had a single file go wonky.

bowen

ApexMirage wrote: »

Honestly as long as you're not actively using any data on the flash stick, you can pretty much just yank it out without having to worry - sure, you're asking for trouble, but it's a hell of a lot less annoying. I've been doing it for years now and have never had a single file go wonky.

Delayed rights don't usually take more than 5 minutes tops. However, the most you'll risk is just losing the data. I'd still recommend doing it and just paying attention to what you "eject".

enderwiggin13

I've accidentally "removed" my system drive before and it just BSODs. It boots up fine again afterwards. I've just taken to selecting very carefully from the list when removing Flash drives or my iPod.

It looks like the first registry fix disables the option to remove Removable Devices at all....which you may not want to do if you remove other devices like an iPod. The 2nd looks more promising, I'd try it out now but it looks like my home computer went to sleep so I can't remote into it.

bowen

enderwiggin13 wrote: »

I've accidentally "removed" my system drive before and it just BSODs. It boots up fine again afterwards. I've just taken to selecting very carefully from the list when removing Flash drives or my iPod.

It looks like the first registry fix disables the option to remove Removable Devices at all....which you may not want to do if you remove other devices like an iPod. The 2nd looks more promising, I'd try it out now but it looks like my home computer went to sleep so I can't remote into it.

Just disables it for Nvidia "hot-swappable" devices connected to the SATA ports on the motherboard. Should still leave it on for USB drives.

PolloDiablo

I experimented with disconnecting it, and yeah, it just shuts down but reboots fine.

I also tried the first registry fix, and it seems to have remedied the problem. Thanks, guys.

enderwiggin13

bowen wrote: »

enderwiggin13 wrote: »

I've accidentally "removed" my system drive before and it just BSODs. It boots up fine again afterwards. I've just taken to selecting very carefully from the list when removing Flash drives or my iPod.

It looks like the first registry fix disables the option to remove Removable Devices at all....which you may not want to do if you remove other devices like an iPod. The 2nd looks more promising, I'd try it out now but it looks like my home computer went to sleep so I can't remote into it.

Just disables it for Nvidia "hot-swappable" devices connected to the SATA ports on the motherboard. Should still leave it on for USB drives.

Durr, thats what i get for not reading your entire post...I missed the "nvata" on the end of the reg key.

bowen

I'm surprised myself that windows would actually automatically list it's "windows" drive as a removable one.

Tofystedeth

Yeah, I have a SATA drive on a MSI mobo and I get that same thing. Freaked me out for a while, but I just started ignoring it. That fix might be nice though. I always like to remove systray clutter.

Red_Cascade

PolloDiablo wrote: »

I experimented with disconnecting it, and yeah, it just shuts down but reboots fine.

I also tried the first registry fix, and it seems to have remedied the problem. Thanks, guys.

Excellent Glad to hear it worked

Crashtard

bowen wrote: »

I'm surprised myself that windows would actually automatically list it's "windows" drive as a removable one.

I was thinking that at first, but I think I've gotten past the point where I'm surprised that windows will do something stupid sometimes.

Topweasel

bowen wrote: »

I'm surprised myself that windows would actually automatically list it's "windows" drive as a removable one.

Because no operating system ever lets you try to ummount the system drive. This isn't about windows going whats this, the system drive, well lets allow this to be ejected. It's about Nvidia allowing all internal SATA II drives be hot swappable. Keep in mind this is "workstation" class mobo made for enthusiast with raid functionality.

The real failure of Windows though is letting you eject it. I have had numerous problem with mysterious programs not let me eject my thumb drive, the fact that you can eject a hot swappable HDD (key in the first part) that currently is being used by windows to.... well.... Run windows, that's just retarded.

Why can just about anything keep me from ejecting my thumb drives, but even windows itself can't stop the OS drive from being removed?

bowen

Exactly why I'm surprised. At least some little check.

"Hey is this the WINDIR drive? No? Okay list it!"

Topweasel

bowen wrote: »

Exactly why I'm surprised. At least some little check.

"Hey is this the WINDIR drive? No? Okay list it!"

I guess the difference is that I don't have problem with it being listed I mean everything is saying this drive is hot swappable, the drive, the controller, the bios, I don't have problems with windows listing it if that criteria is met. The problem I have is that my experiences with thumb drives tell me that the requirements for actual successful ejection is quite high. If that was really the case though, then why can windows successfully eject the drive with the OS partition on it.

bowen

Mm. It's loaded in memory instead of thrashing back and forth between the swap and physical memory? I guess the logistics of it could work in theory, but in actual practice it doesn't work so well.

Improvolone

For those who just pull it out, I've found that I need to unmount the volume before taking it from a Linux to a Windows envrionment (or vice versa)

bowen

Improvolone wrote: »

For those who just pull it out, I've found that I need to unmount the volume before taking it from a Linux to a Windows envrionment (or vice versa)

Same. Or else it complains the NTFS file system is in use. There's a utility in the ntfs-3g packages that fixes that on mount though.