BIOS bug fix: Internal SATA Drives show up as removeable media


Applies to: Windows 11 Windows 10 Windows 8 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 Enterprise Windows 7 Home Premium Windows 7 Home Basic Windows 7 Professional Windows 7 Ultimate Less

Symptoms​

Internal SATA devices (HDDs or SSDs) may show as removable media in your task bar.

93ef66e2-cda2-f6eb-61fc-1c0ffe64d84e.png


Cause​

Whether or not a device is considered removable is determined by your system’s BIOS and how it marks the various SATA ports on the motherboard. The inbox driver directly inspects SATA ports and considers devices connected to those ports marked “external” as removable devices. Not all storage drivers do this, which can be a potential cause for corruption or data loss.

Resolution​

First, check for and install available BIOS updates from your PC manufacturer. If none are available, you can follow these steps to override the way the inbox driver surfaces devices on certain ports:
  1. Open a command prompt with administrator privileges.
  2. In the command prompt window, type the following command in hit Enter: devmgmt.msc
  3. Under Disk Drives, identify the SATA device you would like the inbox driver to consider internal and open properties for this device by right-clicking and selecting Properties.
  4. Note the bus number from the properties overview (“1” in the below example).
    11d9c144-b2b9-b701-79e4-94507e8847a5.png
  5. For Windows 7:
    1. Type the following command in the previously opened command prompt and hit Enter:

      reg add “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci\Controller0\Channelx\” /f /v TreatAsInternalPort /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000001

      Where x corresponds to the Bus Number you noted in step 4.
  6. For Windows 8 and later:
    1. Type the following command in the previously opened command prompt and hit Enter:

      reg add “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\storahci\Parameters\Device” /f /v TreatAsInternalPort /t REG_MULTI_SZ /d x

      Where x corresponds to the Bus Number you noted in step 4.
Click to expand...

Source:

Windows help and learning | Microsoft Support

Find help and how-to articles for Windows operating systems. Get support for Windows and learn about installation, updates, privacy, security and more.
support.microsoft.com support.microsoft.com
 
Click to expand...
If you want to add multiple drives, it only seems to remember the last bus number used.

For multiple drives, manually edit the entry in the registry (not too sure how to do this from the command prompt)

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Microsoft is losin' it. ^^

You can't fix a "BIOS bug" with a registry edit.
You CAN fix a driver or Windows bug with a registry edit.
 

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Drive - Samsung 970 EVO Pro 500g
Location - Bus Number 0, Target Id 0, LUN 0

Tried both the W7 and the W8+ commands - no change......
 

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Not working for me...
1684552074267.png
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1684601307292.png
Got it working using Admin level Powershell, just not Admin level Command Prompt.
PS C:\Users\vince> reg.exe add “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\storahci\Parameters\Device” /f /v TreatAsInternalPort /t REG_MULTI_SZ /d 1
The operation completed successfully.
 
Last edited:

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Firstly, if you need to specify multiple bus numbers in the 'reg' command, you can do it as follows

reg.exe add “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\storahci\Parameters\Device” /f /v TreatAsInternalPort /t REG_MULTI_SZ /d 1\02\03\0

i.e. it's 1\02\03\0, where 1, 2, 3... are the bus numbers and \0 are separators/terminators after each number.

Secondly (and more importantly), most of the time it is not a "bug" at all. SATA standard is initially designed as hotswappable. And an internal SATA port can be perfectly useful for hotswapping as well. There's nothing unusual about it.

These ports are reported by BIOS to Windows as "removable" because in your BIOS settings hotswapping is explicitly enabled for these ports (which is often the default). So, it is not a "bug", it is technically you who requested removability for these drives by failing to adjust your BIOS settings from their default values. Go to your BIOS, find SATA controller configuration and see whether it is possible to disable hotswapping for your internal SATA ports. Most BIOSes have individual per-port settings for this. Once you disable hotswapping for your SATA ports, the corresponding drives will no longer appear as "removable" in Windows.

And only if this is not possible for some reason (no setting in BIOS, genuine BIOS bug, etc.) you will need the above workaround through registry.
 

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Almighty1 said:
Not working for me...
Click to expand...
It is not working for you because you used some strange fancy quotation marks around the key name in your command. Apparently, you copy-pasted it from some other location that used the same kind of quotes. You have to use plain " in command-line for it to work.
 

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AndreyT said:
It is not working for you because you used some strange fancy quotation marks around the key name in your command. Apparently, you copy-pasted it from some other location that used the same kind of quotes. You have to use plain " in command-line for it to work.
Click to expand...

Just noticed that the original location that used incorrect quotation marks (thus preventing these commands from working) is the Microsoft's support article itself, quoted verbatim here :D Quotation marks in post #1 as well as in my post #6 are incorrect.

Let me try it again:

reg.exe add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\storahci\Parameters\Device" /f /v TreatAsInternalPort /t REG_MULTI_SZ /d 1\02\03\0

This command should work properly, provided one specified the correct bus numbers. Although, as @Dronix noted above, the quotation marks are not necessary at all for this key.
 
Last edited:

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