Harddisk appears in safely remove

[LoksieHatti]

Hi community,

I have a HP Z4G4 desktop computer.

The OS is Windows 11 which is installed on the Samsung NVMe drive that came with the computer.

I installed an internal Sata Harddisk.

This harddisk appears in safely remove hardware and media area.

The Samsung NVMe drive with the OS doesn't appear here.

I have read on the internet that this behaviour is a BIOS issue.

My computer has the latest BIOS on the HP site for my HPZ4G4 release 2.92

Is there a solution e.g. a BIOS setting to fix this behaviour?

[BeemerBiker]

It is the windows boot drive and is active. You will  not be able to eject it.

[erico]

You stated"

"

This harddisk appears in safely remove hardware and media area.

The Samsung NVMe drive with the OS doesn't appear here."

The internal storage solutions are not supposed to appear there.  That is also the reason that the icon for the Safely remove Hardware and eject media is of a USB flash drive.  A USB Flash drive is an external device.

You can use either DiskPart or Disk Management to view the OEM Samsung NVMe drive.

Type CMD in the search box. Right click on the Command Prompt app that appears above and select runas administrator.

open a command line window to use the comands I have demonstrated.You will see what is in your PC.

Type Disk in the search box and click on the create and format hard disk app that appears above.

[LoksieHatti]

Thanks BeemerBiker,

It is not my Windows boot drive that appears in safe remove.

It is my Data drive D:\  a Western Digital 4TB

No internal drive should appear in this area, but it does on W11

Microsoft even has a topic about this issue.

They offfer a registry solution :

HKLM\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Services\ storahci\ Parameters\ Device
TreatAsInternalPort

But this does not work relyable either

So it is a known issue

The root of this problem, that I have read, is a BIOS issue

[LoksieHatti]

Thanks Erico,

It is a known issue of W11 and some BIOS.

It is also mentioned by Microsoft themselve.

They offer a registry change as possible solution, but that did not work for me.

This is what Microsoft offer as solution:

HKLM\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Services\ storahci\ Parameters\ Device
TreatAsInternalPort

No internal device should appear in "safely remove hardware and media area".

But in some cases it does on W11.

What I would like to know is wether there is a BIOS setting on my HP Z4G4 that I can change to solve this issue.

Or if HP will release a BIOS update to address this issue.

[erico]

I am curious about why you seem to believe this is an issue instead of an intended design feature  of the OS.

re:"What I would like to know is wether there is a BIOS setting on my HP Z4G4 that I can change to solve this issue."  The answer to that question is a no.

[LoksieHatti]

Thanks for your reply Erico,

First of all English is not my native language, so I hope that my description of the problem is clear enough.

Yesterday I search again the internet for this problem, because I never experienced this problem before on older computers and OS. But that appears to be luck.
This issue seems to persist in certain combinations of windows, BIOS and drivers as long as 14 years.

Microsoft themselve acknowlidge this problem. Here are two of the many discussions on the internet:
https://store.patriotmemory.com/blogs/news/how-to-fix-windows-11-sata-bios-bug
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/14-years-sata-bug-from-windows-7-to-windows-11/

This one is from the Microsoft community:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/internal-sata-drives-show-up-as-removeable-media-1f806a64-...

And this one I found yesterday on this very forum:
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Z4-G4-Windows-11-I...

So it is apparently not an intended design feature but a long standing flaw.
My opinion is that internal devices should not appear as removeable media.

For now I have a scheduled task at startup of the computer to bypass this problem:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SCSI\Disk&Ven_WDC&Prod_WD40EZRZ-22GXCB0\4&324997bd&0&000000]
"Capabilities"=dword:00000060

When the number of the dword ends in 4 (in my case 64) the drive appears as removable
When the number of the dword ends in 0 the drive does not show up as removable

Problem with this solution is that you have to do this every startup, because the number is automatically altered ending with a 4

[BeemerBiker]

I have had the same problem show up and on one of my systems.  I found the SATA connector for the HDD was the type that an external "esata" drive could be connected to.  I moved the drive to one of the normal internal sata connectors.

On other systems I just ignore the eject option. Possibly the BIOS thinks the drive is part of a raid system and can be ejected while "hot" as is typical for redundant raid drives.

Thanks for the links but what I have seen Microsoft MVP'ers advise is that the problem can be ignored for active drives.

I already have enough problems ejecting even USB flash drives in windows 11 and I have never seen an "eject" option for my iPhone after image transfers get hung...

[LoksieHatti]

Thanks BeemerBiker,

I agree that this issue can be ignored.

It is not a big problem.

The reason I started a search to solve this flaw, is thet I had never seen it before on my previous computers.

So I wanted to fix it.

For now I can live with the scheduled registry task.

Maybe I wil try to switch the internal driv D:\ to one of the normal internal sata connectors.

The HP Z4G4 has six of them and I only have my DVD-drive connected to one of them

Maybe a tip for you concerning image transfers from your phone using USB connection.

I use the android app "Cx File Explorer" for this.

Never expierenced a problem with this method of transfer.

In the past using a USB connection multiple times a hung-up