Weird harddrive problem

[raideralan]

Recently after my cousin came over and played around with my father's computer I've been getting this weird USB safely removing device symbol on the bottom left hand corner near the time. I can't seem to get rid of it. Every time I click it my harddrive shows up in the little window thing(you know when you plug your Flash drive into your computer and then you want to safely eject it you have to go through the process of safely removing device by clicking on the green arrow thing icon. For me I see my harddrive in it). I can't eject it and I even tried a clean reformat but the problem still occurs. It doesn't affect the computer in anyway but I know it's not suppose to be like that. Does anyone know how I can fix it?

[neutralizer]

It should always be there because your hard drive is mostly like a SATA hard drive. At least, it shows up all the time for all my SATA hard drives.

[TakutoKun]

Right now, I am not to sure. After some research, people seemed to have been told to just ignore it. You can "hide" the icon in your System Tray if you would like. I will keep looking around to see what I can find.

Anyone else have some thoughts?

Edit: After Neutralizer reminded me, I saw some threads on that too. SATA drives showing up in your "Safely Remove Hardware" icon. I saw some kind of update to the Nforce chipset. Here is the thread that talks about this issue - http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windo...t-up-menu.html .

[raideralan]

Yes it is a SATA drive.

[Tiberium Wolf]

Just out of curiosity...

I got sata drives but the icon I got in the system tray is for the usb device I have. Why would that be associated with sata drives?

I did a clean install a few months ago and before putting any usb devices I never saw that icon in the system tray.

[TakutoKun]

Originally Posted by Tiberium Wolf

Just out of curiosity...

I got sata drives but the icon I got in the system tray is for the usb device I have. Why would that be associated with sata drives?

I did a clean install a few months ago and before putting any usb devices I never saw that icon in the system tray.

What kind of chipset do you have? NVidia?



Note that my controller is NForce... It appears that there is some sort of update for this chipset.

[hobbes_fan]

yep have it as well for nforce 430 chipset not really an issue. SATA is hot swappable from what I know (ie it has the same functionality as a USB device). It actually looks like that e-sata (external sata) will eventually replace USB as it has a theoretically higher bandwidth.

[Tiberium Wolf]

Originally Posted by matradley

What kind of chipset do you have? NVidia?



Note that my controller is NForce... It appears that there is some sort of update for this chipset.

Intel p965.

[TakutoKun]

Originally Posted by Tiberium Wolf

Intel p965.

I believe someone might have mentioned this, but I found this thread - http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/5...ted-usb-2.html . It mentions that SATA drives show up in your "Safely Remove Hardware" so you can remove SATA drives safely as they are not hot swappable. I do not know if you are using eSATA, but this could be a feature of your board?

[Aoie_Emesai]

Originally Posted by raideralan

Recently after my cousin came over and played around with my father's computer I've been getting this weird USB safely removing device symbol on the bottom left hand corner near the time. I can't seem to get rid of it. Every time I click it my harddrive shows up in the little window thing(you know when you plug your Flash drive into your computer and then you want to safely eject it you have to go through the process of safely removing device by clicking on the green arrow thing icon. For me I see my harddrive in it). I can't eject it and I even tried a clean reformat but the problem still occurs. It doesn't affect the computer in anyway but I know it's not suppose to be like that. Does anyone know how I can fix it?

Mine does the same sometimes too, i've just ignored it all this time.

[Tiberium Wolf]

Originally Posted by matradley

I believe someone might have mentioned this, but I found this thread - http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/5...ted-usb-2.html . It mentions that SATA drives show up in your "Safely Remove Hardware" so you can remove SATA drives safely as they are not hot swappable. I do not know if you are using eSATA, but this could be a feature of your board?

No I am not using eSata. 1st time I heard of eSata. I did some searching and eSata enables HDD to reside in their own housing outside the computer and be plugged in as required. I am not using this. With that link then sata drivers appearing in usb tray is coz of NVIDIA.

Talking about eSata. How do you use that? I mean what hardware is involved.

Edit: I check in manual: southbridge intel ICH8R -> Should I mentioned this instead of the northbridge? Only northbridge info showed in pcwizard 2007.

[TakutoKun]

Originally Posted by Tiberium Wolf

No I am not using eSata. 1st time I heard of eSata. I did some searching and eSata enables HDD to reside in their own housing outside the computer and be plugged in as required. I am not using this. With that link then sata drivers appearing in usb tray is coz of NVIDIA.

Talking about eSata. How do you use that? I mean what hardware is involved.

Edit: I check in manual: southbridge intel ICH8R -> Should I mentioned this instead of the northbridge? Only northbridge info showed in pcwizard 2007.

eSATA is "external" SATA. If your board supports it, you will see an eSATA port on the back of your computer. I have seen this coloured red. Here is a WikiPedia article on SATA that talks about eSATA - WikiPedia - SATA

You only really have to tell us about the Northbridge as the northbridge controls the southbridge.

[Tiberium Wolf]

I have just found a gigabyte board picture with eSata. 1st time seeing it.

Besides usb and firewire now we have eSata.

[TakutoKun]

Originally Posted by Tiberium Wolf

I have just found a gigabyte board picture with eSata. 1st time seeing it.

Besides usb and firewire now we have eSata.

Yeah, but with eSATA, the bus width is much higher - 2400 Mbits.

[hobbes_fan]

Originally Posted by matradley

I believe someone might have mentioned this, but I found this thread - http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/5...ted-usb-2.html . It mentions that SATA drives show up in your "Safely Remove Hardware" so you can remove SATA drives safely as they are not hot swappable. I do not know if you are using eSATA, but this could be a feature of your board?

SATA is definitely hotswappable, it's one of the advantages over PATA. Windows, as your link posted won't let you remove the boot drive for obvious reasons. But non boot drives are fine.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/techno...hite_paper.htm

Spoiler for white paper excerpt:

Serial ATA standards activities
The Serial ATA Working Group published the Serial ATA 1.0a specification in 2003, which was in turn adopted by the ANSI T13 public standards committee as the ATA/ATAPI-7 V3 specification. In 2004, the Serial ATA Working Group evolved into a formal organization called the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), dedicated to sustain the specification and create further SATA-based interface solutions. The pioneering work instigated by the Serial ATA Working Group and carried forward by SATA-IO has resulted in a number of extensions to the basic Serial ATA 1.0a specification, including both interface transfer rate solutions of 1.5 Gb/second and 3.0 Gb/second, as well as optional features such as Native Command Queuing, Asynchronous Notification, Staggered Spin-Up, Hot Plugability, Link Power Management, new cabling configurations, Port Multiplier, Port Selector, and Click Connect to name a few. As of March, 2005, SATA-IO has grown to over 100 members, and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was elected to the SATA-IO Board of Directors.

http://www.sata-io.org/docs/serialat...technology.pdf
refer to conclusions section.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by hobbes_fan

SATA is definitely hotswappable, it's one of the advantages over PATA. Windows, as your link posted won't let you remove the boot drive for obvious reasons. But non boot drives are fine.

It also depends on your hardware. My motherboard supports SATA, but in the manual it states that it does not support the hot-swappable feature of SATA drives. I went for a budget board that's socket 754 (it was cheap!) which probably explains why it doesn't support it; I'd imagine that it's standard on practically all hardware today.

[hobbes_fan]

socket 754? that's so 2003. But you're right the vast majority of current gen motherboards should do (at least those with nvidia and new ATi chipsets, not 100% sure for intel and no idea about SiS and Via chipsets). But may not be he case for older chipsets. What I find is if your motherboard has RAID functionality, it will support it, at least from the 15-20 motherboards I'm looking at for my next uber L33t watercooled gaming PC build.

Originally Posted by Tiberium Wolf

Talking about eSata. How do you use that? I mean what hardware is involved.

What is esata?

Well, you need obviously 1 free sata port on your motherboard
1 esata bracket and cable
1 esata cable
1 external HDD supporting esata such as this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145167
and 1 HDD

he item pictured on the left of this link is basically the esata port.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowIm...rnal+Enclosure
basically the bracket pictured on the left is connected to the SATA port on your motherboard. giving you one esata port. you then put the HDD in the external case, power it up, connect the other esata cable to the back of the enclosure and to the port, Format to NTFS or FAT32 in windows or ext3 in linux and voila, a working esata drive.

You may have to install drivers depending on your O/S but from the 4 I've put in on Windows XP SP2 and Vista systems, there's no need. It just recognises it as a SATA device.

Right now it's only available for HDD storage, however with MP3 players increasing in capacity I wouldn't be surprised if they became commonplace on them too.