2nd SATA HD in Vista showing "autoplay" function?

[AcidicRage]

This is strange. I am using Vista and I just noticed that my 2nd SATA HD (400GB Maxtor) has an autoplay function in it, while my 1st SATA HD doesn't. I don't think it has any viruses or anything... but it just has an autoplay function when I right click it. When I do click autoplay, just another menu pops up saying I have mixed content (like do I want to play music/video/pictures, etc)... I do have a bunch of files in the 2nd HD... like music, videos, pictures, documents, etc... maybe it's like this for Vista?

Strange, eh?

[rise2mcr]

Thats quite strange. never seen that before. has it always been like that since the install of Vista?

[alphanumeric]

Have a look in the root directory of that drive for an autorun.inf file. If you find one rename or delete it and see if the autorun option goes away.

[AcidicRage]

How would I go about to finding the root directory for an autorun file for that drive? It seems to be maybe hidden/read-only/etc... I can't find it even after searching. I think it might have been like this since Vista install. I haven't noticed. I thought maybe Vista had an option if you bundle with music, videos, pictures...it autoplays or something. I don't know.

[alphanumeric]

The root directory for the drive would be the directory you see when you go to the drive in explorer, C:\ or D:\ etc. What I was thinking was that maybe you copied all the files from the CD or DVD to the root your D:\ drive instead of copying them to a folder on the drive. If that DVD had an autorun.inf file on it, it would end up in the root of the D:\ drive. In windows XP if you did that the autorun file would run every time you double clicked the D: drive in explorer and try to run that program. I don't know how vista handles it. I could be completely off the mark and thats just how vista works. :confused:

[AcidicRage]

Hmm... I just copied music & pictures, but not directly from a source like DVD/CD or anything (mostly downloaded stuff, hehe). Strange that there would be an autorun.ini on a new sata HD. Maybe it's just my lack of Vista knowledge--I dunno.

[alphanumeric]

Does that SATA drive show up as hot swappable or removable? If so then it's likely Vista treats it like an inserted CD, DVD or thumb drive and gives you an autorun menu.

[gn0me]

Does that SATA drive show up as hot swappable or removable? If so then it's likely Vista treats it like an inserted CD, DVD or thumb drive and gives you an autorun menu.

All SATA drives are hot swappable and removable. If you have a SATA drive in your computer, then I'm betting you have a "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in your system tray. If you left click on that icon it'll bring up the list of devices or drives that you can safely remove (even your OS drive). Any flash drives will show up when you do this as well. This functionality works the same way in XP and Vista. That is, unless, you have changed the drives device properties policy to "Optimize for quick removal" instead of "Optimize for performance". Not sure why you would want to do that for a hard drive that you always use though.

I have an eSATA drive and if I turn it on after the computer has been on for a while, I will get the autoplay menu as well (in Vista). Sometimes Vista won't even see the drive when I turn it on. XP will see it every time if I boot the drive after already in the OS. That's a different problem though.

However, you shouldn't be seeing this autoplay menu come up when you browse to a drive that is booted when the system is. You may have an option set to power the hard drive down to save power when not in use, and then when you go to use it the system powers it back on, prompting the autoplay menu. Hope you get the problem figured out.