safely remove DVD drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jo-Anne
  • Start date Start date
J

Jo-Anne

I've just begun learning about my new Dell notebook (XP SP2 for now, SP3
soon). I plugged a flash drive into one of the USB ports to make sure it was
working. I then clicked on the icon for safely removing hardware--and I
discovered that among the things that could be safely removed was my DVD
drive. It's not an external drive, so why would it be listed? And now I see
that the "safely remove" icon is permanently in the system tray (I rebooted
to make sure).

Is this normal? If not, what do I do to make the computer see the DVD drive
as internal, not external?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne
 
It has nothing to do with external/internal drives, its a feature of the
motherboard and type of drive controller used, typically seen when sata
controlers are being used.
Sometimes a motherboard chipset update amends the settings and what safely
remove identifies
 
Jo-Anne said:
I've just begun learning about my new Dell notebook (XP SP2 for now, SP3
soon). I plugged a flash drive into one of the USB ports to make sure it
was working. I then clicked on the icon for safely removing hardware--and
I discovered that among the things that could be safely removed was my DVD
drive. It's not an external drive, so why would it be listed? And now I
see that the "safely remove" icon is permanently in the system tray (I
rebooted to make sure).

Is this normal? If not, what do I do to make the computer see the DVD
drive as internal, not external?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne
Click to expand...

It is normal, because the drive is removable by design. It doesn't matter
that it's physically inside the case, it is designed to be removable.

If you look at the Dell accessories site, you'll probably find that you can
get other components that go there, such as another battery. So, you can
pop that drive out and slide the battery in while you're working

You'll find the latches on the bottom of the laptop.

You don't need to do anything about this. This behaviour is intended and
as designed.

HTH
-pk
 
Thank you, Patrick! That makes sense to me; I hadn't thought of the drive
being interchangeable with something else there.

Jo-Anne
 
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