Windows 'seeing' my internal SATA Drives as removeable

BuisyBizz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 17, 2002
Messages
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I just reformatted my computer (XP Pro, SP2), and now windows has the safely remove hardware icon in the system tray, and allows me to remove my internal SATA Drives (obviously not the one with C: on it). Also, it wont let me rename one of my partitions because it says is a system volume. WTF. Does anyone know how I can fix this?
 
The "removable drive" thing is normal (well, in terms of what's expected of the drivers, not in terms of what you can do). Serial ATA drives are hot-pluggable; if you've got the right hardware you can unplug disks while the machine is on.

Why do you want to rename one of your partitions? What do you mean, exactly, by "rename"? Which window are you in when you attempt to rename the partition?
 
The drives didn't appear as removable on my previous installation. This started after the format.
Sorry I wasn't specific. What I meant to say was it won't let me change the drive letters for one of my partitions. Here's how the partitions are setup Drive 1 > C:, E:. Drive 2: > Currently set to Q, originally D, but I renamed it with the intentions of making the current E: drive D.

Does anyone think there is some driver I could download to make them not show up as removable? Could this be because I didn't hit F6 while installing windows to install the Raid Drivers?
 
The drives didn't appear as removable on my previous installation. This started after the format.
Sorry I wasn't specific. What I meant to say was it won't let me change the drive letters for one of my partitions. Here's how the partitions are setup Drive 1 > C:, E:. Drive 2: > Currently set to Q, originally D, but I renamed it with the intentions of making the current E: drive D.
Windows doesn't handle this, as far as I know. Unfortunately, searching has been disabled, so I can't confirm this.
Does anyone think there is some driver I could download to make them not show up as removable? Could this be because I didn't hit F6 while installing windows to install the Raid Drivers?
Could be. The RAID drivers will be different - possibly by a different group or even a different company - and may not have the same bug. But merely that they are RAID drivers doesn't mean the bug is absent.
 
As for the removeable part, there's no need to worry or change this. It is normal with some chipsets, and if it didn't happen on your previous install, you were probably missing chipset drivers.

As for the drive letters, it sounds like you didn't make each partition on drive one standalone, primary partitions. I'd probably back up whatever is on E, and remove the partition completely. Stretch out C to use the whole drive, and then make your second Drive D.
 
The safely remove thing I can deal with and understand. Not being able to change my drive letter is quite annoying. I'd do what the poster above suggests, but then I'd end up with a 200GB C drive, which I dont want. I like C: to be 'disposable' for reasons I'm sure we all understand.
 
I am not sure, but I think the 'safely remove' option comes about because AHCI is enabled on your BIOS. If you are feeling adventurous, you could try to disable that in the BIOS and see if the icon goes away. If it were me, I wouldn't bother with it, as I don't know know what will happen to the drives or the OS if you disable that after installing windows.

As for the drive letter problem, I assume you tried to change driver letters from the Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management ?
 
I know we're down to personal preference, but there's nothing wrong with having a 200 GB system volume. I'm currently using 2 250 GB drives, and each one is formatted to one solid partition. With Vista's size, and the size of games and other apps on disk, having a lot of free space is a good idea.
 
Also, it wont let me rename one of my partitions because it says is a system volume. WTF. Does anyone know how I can fix this?
A reinstall will be the quickest option. Everyhting else involves a lot of hacking, if I am to believe Djnes from the OS forum.
 
A reinstall will be the quickest option. Everyhting else involves a lot of hacking, if I am to believe Djnes from the OS forum.

lol. I find it totally ironic that after a format to start fresh, I need to format, to recover from the previous format. Think windows will let me delete the partition it wont let me rename? If not, would there be any adverse effects if I just used a third party boot time tool to delete it?
 
I had accepted my fate and was moving some backup files from my E: drive, when i stumbled upon boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect on the root of the drive. So I decided to look for boot.ini on c:, and lo and behold, its not there...here's a copy of whats in the on on E: and what shows up in msconfig. This is the reason is not allowing me to rename.

Code:
[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

My question now is can I simply copy those files over to C: and change the partition pointer to 1? Or just use my xp disk to do fix boot and fix mbr? Or does this have to do with some low level HDD stuff?
 
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