Windows 7 – Internal SATA Hard Disk Shows as Removable Device

hard driveremovablesatawindows 7

I am running Windows 7 on an Acer Aspire M7720 with three internal SATA drives; drive #2 and #3 are on a removable HDD rack.

Drive #3 (on the second removable HDD rack) shows up as removable device in the system tray. If I take drive #3 and put it in the first rack, it shows up as an internal drive. If I put any other drive in the second removable rack, that drive is also shown as removable device.

I would like to fix that so that the drive in the second removable rack also is listed as internal drive. Since this seems to be independent of the actual drive in the rack, I checked the BIOS, but that third SATA port uses the same configuration as the second rack.

So far, I could not find a solution for this problem (it's really more an annoyance than a problem), any ideas are welcome.

Best Answer

This happens if the SATA controller is set to AHCI mode. AHCI supports hot swapping, and because of this, you can ask Windows to "Safely Remove" an internal hard disk, disconnecting it from the OS and replace it without having to power down the system.

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Windows – External Hard Drive being incorrectly recognized as Internal Hard Disk

My source: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html#partitioning

I know it talks about flash drives, but the 'removable bit' is common between all USB removable drives.

Nearly all USB flash drives pretend to have a removable media
(even it's a lie), so Windows detects them as 'removable'. On 
drives with a removable media Windows 2000 and higher supports 
only one partition.
Finally it's a single bit in the device's device descriptor, 
the removable media bit (RMB). If you take away the RMB then 
Windows sees the drive as 'local disk' and multiple partitions 
work.
The Removable Media Bit can be changed either in the drive's 
hardware or by a Windows filter driver.

Lexar BootIt is mentioned in many places for changing the RMB, but be warned: A couple of places i've read it can damage USB-pendrives (i'm guessing the RMB on these devices is hardware coded in some way). In theory you won't have a problem as you've already successfully removed it.

opsin makes a good point about reinstating the original software/filesystem on the device, in theory returning it to factory settings will restore the RMB bit. My guess is that windows removed the removable bit when you created multiple partitions followed by formatting.

Windows – Why the internal hard disk can be ejected

Its Normal for AHCI SATA mode which supports a feature called hot swapping : Enables you to swap hard disk without powering down the whole system

Citation : Internal SATA hard disk shows up as removable device on Windows 7

You are supposed to update Your SATA driver : Microsoft provide AHCI driver than install this hotfix

MS KB article : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178

INTEL than install Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver

Best Answer

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Windows – External Hard Drive being incorrectly recognized as Internal Hard Disk

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