HDD'S detected as removable media

Hey guys i need some advice, sorry for the noob question or if I'm asking something that has already been posted, i did my fair amount of searching and found nothing that's why I'm posting a new thread.

I've had my m17x for almost 10 months and finally decided to do a fresh install, I've been using it with raid like it came from factory on day one - 2 western digital hdd's in raid, i decided to get rid of raid and before formatting i changed it to AHCI native, windows 7 didn't want to install, God knows why anyways after some googling in some forum they suggested removing a hdd in order for win7 to install, i removed hdd 1, on the inside they were number coded as 0 and 1, i thought the logical thing of removing hdd 1 as it would be considered 2ndary, nada, no hdd detected, removed hdd 0 and left in hdd 1 it worked!! my problem is that both hdd's now appear as removable media in windows 7, is this because of the os been installed on hdd 1? is this normal does ahci native make hdd's appear as removable media? what can i do to make them appear as fixed hdd's ? i installed all updated drivers from dell's website in the order recommended by dell.

any input would be greatly appreciated.

cheers!!

 

If I am not mistaken - AHCI is capable of hot swapping. which technically would make the drive (really DO NOT remove the windows drive...heh) capable of being removed with the operating system going.

 

yeah i also picked that up in another form due, to the hot swapping capability hdd's can be removed with the os running and therefore it's detected as removable media, but what is everyone else doing?, does that mean that anyone that has their hdd's as achi native have their hdd's as removable media? I'm sure there must be a way around this, it just bugs me to see the icon in the lower right corner which is usually there when i have some usb device plugged, anyone

 

They're not supposed to be there if you installed NVIDIA Storage Driver when you installed Chipset driver.
In device manager... IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers... right click on whatever Serial ATA Controller you have... update driver software.... browse my computer for driver software... let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer... and choose the "NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller"... it shouldn't be in the removable drives list anymore.

I'm using the Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller because I need to use Intel SSD Toolbox and yeah, my harddrives appear as removable devices. But if i change it to NVIDIA driver, it fixes it.

 

Nvidia storage driver? or just a typo?

 

Thanks guys, i followed Thatoe's instructions and "NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller" wasn't listed, only Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller, the only reason why this could of happened was i unticked the ethernet drivers cause according this post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/432377-installing-windows-7-m17x.html

it causes trouble under win7, reinstalling the chipset driver after driver-sweeping under safe mode and all good, I'm looking into getting an intel ssd drive, Thatoe why do you have to use the Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller? is it not compatible with Intel SSD Toolbox? other then having the lower right icon, any other cons when using the Standard AHCI 1.0

 

So, after you installed the chipset driver again, you don't have that icon anymore, right?

I have to use it because with the NVIDIA driver, the SSD Toolbox doesn't recognize my SSD as intel SSD. Only with the Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller can I use the Intel SSD Management Tools.
And there's no con that I'm aware of. I've been using it this way for at least 5 months.

 

yeah after i installed the chipset driver there is no icon, thanks for the info, I'm a step ahead now when i get my intel ssd, is it much more snapier then a regular hdd, im wondering if its worth the steep price tag

 

ask anyone here. SSD is the most noticeable upgrade you can get.
Everything will be faster in your daily use.

 

awesome, just what i wanted to hear, thanks mate, I'll order it in amazon now!!