FireWire Drive: Tell Windows it's removable?

Posted by: tfabris

FireWire Drive: Tell Windows it's removable? - 31/01/2005 05:19

Googling and MSKB searching isn't producing any results, I thought I'd give it a shot here...

I have a USB flash card reader that appears as a disk drive in Windows 2000. The flash reader shows up as a removable drive icon, and when I right-click on the icon there is an "eject" option, which flushes the write cache prior to pulling the card.

I have a firewire external hard disk that appears as a disk drive in Windows 2000. The firewire disk shows up as a regular disk icon, and I do not have the "eject" option when I right-click on it.

I'm able to eject the firewire drive if I dig into the control panel's add/remove hardware wizard. But it would be nice to have the convenient rightclick just like the flash reader has.

Anyone know how to tell Windows that the firewire drive is removable, so it will behave like the flash drive and allow me to right-click eject it?

I honestly don't expect anyone to have an answer, but this BBS has surprised me in the past, so...
Posted by: bonzi

Re: FireWire Drive: Tell Windows it's removable? - 31/01/2005 05:46

Not really an answer, and risking to state the obvious, but my USB disk doesn't have an 'eject' option in context menu, either. However, I don't have to go to control panel, as 'safely remove hardware' icon sits in the tray, requiring only two clicks (icon itself and the particular USB peripheral) for safe removal. Firewire hardware doesn't provoke similar behavior?
Posted by: tfabris

Re: FireWire Drive: Tell Windows it's removable? - 31/01/2005 06:45

I could activate that stupid icon and its correspondingly stupid wizard that requires far too many clicks if I wanted to, yeah. But that's not the question I asked.
Posted by: peter

Re: FireWire Drive: Tell Windows it's removable? - 31/01/2005 08:26

Quote:
Anyone know how to tell Windows that the firewire drive is removable, so it will behave like the flash drive and allow me to right-click eject it?

It's a bit that gets set in the SCSI device description. Unless Microsoft have deliberately added an override to Windows, your best bet is to take the enclosure to bits to see whether there's a jumper on the firewire-to-IDE bridge board. If the same company use the same bridge board for ejectable devices such as CD-ROMs, this is quite likely.

Peter
Posted by: bonzi

Re: FireWire Drive: Tell Windows it's removable? - 31/01/2005 08:53

Quote:
I could activate that stupid icon and its correspondingly stupid wizard that requires far too many clicks if I wanted to, yeah. But that's not the question I asked.

If you left-click on it (or perhaps double-click), then the stupid wizard is not launched; you only get a list of drives and need just one additional click. But 'eject' in the context menu would be better...
Posted by: StigOE

Re: FireWire Drive: Tell Windows it's removable? - 31/01/2005 13:56

I don't know what kind of firewire disk you have, but my WD firewire disk is easily removed by left-clicking on 'safely remove hardware'-icon and clicking on the corresponding drive-letter. No need for a lot of wizards. Getting a 'Eject' option would only save you one click anyway...

Stig
Posted by: hybrid8

Re: FireWire Drive: Tell Windows it's removable? - 31/01/2005 14:49

You only have to click TWICE in the tray icon to eject anything. Click once with the LMB to pop up a small list (no windows) and then select the drive again with LMB. That's it. no windows or other confirmation alerts pop up (none that requre you to click beyond those two)

If you want an EJECT command on all removable drives, you'll have to switch to Mac OS X.

Bruno
Posted by: tfabris

Re: FireWire Drive: Tell Windows it's removable? - 31/01/2005 15:28

Quote:
your best bet is to take the enclosure to bits to see whether there's a jumper on the firewire-to-IDE bridge board

Interesting! I'll have to look into this more. I'll google and see if anyone has shown examples of this elsewhere.
Posted by: StigOE

Re: FireWire Drive: Tell Windows it's removable? - 31/01/2005 21:21

Quote:
no windows or other confirmation alerts pop up (none that requre you to click beyond those two)

That's not quite right if you're using Win2000, as you will get a messagebox with '<Something> can now safely be removed' (something like that), which you have to acknowledge. With XP your statement would be true. Allthough in this case it's still correct since, IIRC, Tony has hacked away the messagebox.

Stig