Solved Two of my internal hard drives are ejectable?

Catnip · Nov 1, 2023

I noticed when ejecting a USB device today that on the pop up list for things I could eject are two internal SSDs. Having accidentally ejected a drive once before, there is no way I want to do it again because it was a PITA getting the drive to be recognized again.

I know that there is a setting somewhere that controls if the drive can be ejected like a USB flash drive, I just can't find it. Could someone point the way, please?

I would like to turn this "feature" off.

Ghot · Nov 1, 2023

Catnip said:
I noticed when ejecting a USB device today that on the pop up list for things I could eject are two internal SSDs. Having accidentally ejected a drive once before, there is no way I want to do it again because it was a PITA getting the drive to be recognized again.

I know that there is a setting somewhere that controls if the drive can be ejected like a USB flash drive, I just can't find it. Could someone point the way, please?

I would like to turn this "feature" off.

A bug in Windows 11 makes it recognize internal drives as removable ones

Microsoft has recently confirmed that Windows 11 may sometimes recognize and display built-in SATA drives as removable drives, causing confusion for

winaero.com

cineman195 · Nov 1, 2023

Catnip said:
I would like to turn this "feature" off.

Had the same problem, tried many things, the only thing that worked was what @Ghot wrote in the above post, registry modification.
I have another similar problem, my TP-Link USB Wi-Fi adapter is also listed as removable, so far I have not been able to change it. Installing its own drivers seems to do it, but their drivers don't work as well as Microsoft ones and once I install MS drivers, back to being 'removable' !

Catnip · Nov 2, 2023

Thank you so much Ghot! I will try this when I get home.

Catnip · Nov 4, 2023

Thanks to Ghot, I now have one of my drives off the list. I think I know what is going on with the second one. The registry edit that you have to make overwrites the original. Since I have two drives afflicted, the second one overwrites the parameters I set for the first one and only the second drive is invisible now. This is good. I have something to work with now and I should be able to figure out how to get the second drive not to appear on the list with some ninja registry editing.

pietcorus2 · Nov 4, 2023

Its an old bug , in Win10 also..........
Im using a task ( works with every boot/reboot ) , which "removes " the internal HDDs/SSDs from the list of removable USB...........

Scott · Nov 4, 2023

I had a similar experience not related to this bug. One day, with no usb media plugged in I see the safely remove icon on the taskbar. It had my 980 Pro boot drive on the list.
I start looking around and in device manager I see a storage controller driver I'd never seen before (Phison generic NVMe driver). No clue how it got there.

I replaced it with the MS generic NVMe dirver and the remove safley icon dissapeared.

cineman195 · Nov 4, 2023

Catnip said:
The registry edit that you have to make overwrites the original.

I thought that a new entry was to be crated, how was there a original one ?
Anyway, what I did was this:
"For HDDs showing as "Removable" :
What helped was a slight variation of this link How can I remove the option to eject internal SATA drives from the Windows 8 tray icon?

i.e., I added a new Multi String Value called TreatAsInternalPort to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\storahci\Parameters\Device with the value:

0
1
2
4
5
(note the newlines)"

This tip I found by Google search, this removes all the internal HDDs shown a 'ejectable'
Regards

Spartan · Nov 5, 2023

Catnip said:
I noticed when ejecting a USB device today that on the pop up list for things I could eject are two internal SSDs. Having accidentally ejected a drive once before, there is no way I want to do it again because it was a PITA getting the drive to be recognized again.

I know that there is a setting somewhere that controls if the drive can be ejected like a USB flash drive, I just can't find it. Could someone point the way, please?

I would like to turn this "feature" off.

have you installed any custom NVMe Controller driver by any chance? I had that issue when installing the NVMe controller driver for a Phison based SSD, then it would appear in the list of removable devices.

Catnip · Nov 5, 2023

Spartan said:
have you installed any custom NVMe Controller driver by any chance? I had that issue when installing the NVMe controller driver for a Phison based SSD, then it would appear in the list of removable devices.

I checked my controller drivers and they all say the standard Microsoft driver, unfortunately.

cineman195 said:
I thought that a new entry was to be crated, how was there a original one ?

What I meant was, the first time you do it, it creates a new entry. The second time you do it with a different drive, it seems to overwrite that last new entry. I was able to get my first drive fixed up, but when I did the second drive, the first drive reappeared in the USB listing. I'm not the biggest registry genius, so I am a bit reluctant to start messing around with something overly complicated in the registry, lest I break something.

But I am going to try the fix you posted. Thanks.

archfoto · Nov 5, 2023

Just spit-balling here, but if you can't get your computer to recognize the drive, how about shutting down, disconnecting the drive physically, restarting the computer, and shutting off, and reconnecting the drive and restart again? Sounds like a PITA, but could it work?

Catnip · Nov 11, 2023

archfoto said:
Just spit-balling here, but if you can't get your computer to recognize the drive, how about shutting down, disconnecting the drive physically, restarting the computer, and shutting off, and reconnecting the drive and restart again? Sounds like a PITA, but could it work?

Oh no, it recognizes the drive just fine, but Windows is showing it as a USB device that I can eject. Doing so is close to catastrophic as it is a nightmare to get it reconnected - at least in past experience. I can't remember now how I got the drive reconnected. I must have blocked out that particular memory due to all of the trauma involved.

Catnip · Nov 11, 2023

Spartan said:
have you installed any custom NVMe Controller driver by any chance? I had that issue when installing the NVMe controller driver for a Phison based SSD, then it would appear in the list of removable devices.

I have the Samsung NVMe drivers installed. Both of my NVMe's do not list as ejectable, just my two SATA SSDs (both Samsung). I've got it down to only one SATA drive being ejectable, but if I set the other one to not ejectable, the other one comes back as ejectable again. I am not sure why this is happening. It seems to be a logical XOR function. I can have one or the other, but not both.

Spartan · Nov 14, 2023

Catnip said:
I have the Samsung NVMe drivers installed. Both of my NVMe's do not list as ejectable, just my two SATA SSDs (both Samsung). I've got it down to only one SATA drive being ejectable, but if I set the other one to not ejectable, the other one comes back as ejectable again. I am not sure why this is happening. It seems to be a logical XOR function. I can have one or the other, but not both.

just as I expected, I had the same issue when I installed the Phison NVMe Driver for my previous Sabrent Rocket SSD. Any non-native Windows driver seems to trigger this bug. Also, not sure if it matters to you but when using a third-party driver, you lose DirectStorage so I would uninstall that Samsung NVMe driver

Marie SWE · Nov 15, 2023

Log in to BIOS... check if the drives in bios is set as hot-swap... and most likely they are if windows or Linux sees them as removable drives.

Catnip · Nov 17, 2023

@Marie SWE That was it! My new Gigabyte board is not like my old ASUS. I can't set just one SATA plug to hot swap like I need to. They all set to hot swap, giving me the problem. Iturned off hot swapping and presto! Problem solved. Thanks for the advice.

hsehestedt · Nov 17, 2023

Looking at this from a different angle...

The default policy is for external drives not to need using the Eject tool. You can simply disconnect them.

I never ever use the eject tool and have zero problems. I must connect / disconnect external drives, thumb drives, SD cards, etc. a minimum of 20 times every single day.

Catnip · Nov 19, 2023

hsehestedt said:
Looking at this from a different angle...

The default policy is for external drives not to need using the Eject tool. You can simply disconnect them.

I never ever use the eject tool and have zero problems. I must connect / disconnect external drives, thumb drives, SD cards, etc. a minimum of 20 times every single day.

I agree, but I'm paranoid. I borked a couple of thumb drives with valuable data on them by just unplugging them. Thankfully, I had backups.