Mysterious Floppy Drive!

[GenuineXP]

Hello. I recently posted about a thermistor problem I had and now I've got something new!

I'm using ASUS' A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard. I have two Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 80GB hard drives, but one drive uses an SATA interface and the other uses an IDE interface.

When I first booted from the Windows XP CD-ROM, it detected both disks without having to install any third party drivers for the SATA drive. That was pleasing enough, but it designated the IDE drive as "C" and the SATA drive as "D". The problem is, I want to install the OS and program files on the SATA drive and use the IDE drive as an auxiliary/backup disk.

To remedy this, I disconnected the IDE drive and installed Windows on the SATA drive which it now designated as "C"... afterall, it was the only hard drive connected. This worked fine. I then reconnected the IDE disk. Windows designated it "F" but kept claiming it was a system disk. I could make no changes to it! I couldn't format it or change the drive letter! I solved this by making the IDE drive the slave on that channel.

One problem remains! After I reconnected the IDE drive, a new mysterious floppy disk drive appeared! Even after I disconnected the IDE drive, the floppy drive remained! I'm not sure if there's any relation, but when the IDE drive was the master there was a mysterious 5-1/4 floppy, and when the IDE drive was slave there was a mysterious 3-1/2 floppy!

Does anyone know what's going on with this? Of course, the rogue floppy drive is inaccessible. Where's it coming from...?

Thanks!

(Sorry for the long long post.)

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Haha I have the exact same thing with the floppy drive

I know how to hide it if you want...

 

[GenuineXP]

Sure, I'd like to know how to at least hide this faux floppy drive.

Isn't there a way to do it using Explorer policies? (That is, setting a policy to hide certain drives in the registry.)

Oh. Any suggestions for my hard drive configuration? I'd really like to use the SATA drive for my OS and program files, but I don't understand why I can't leave the other (IDE) hard disk in the master position. Maybe setting the IDE hard disk to slave is the only option, but it seems to be an inelegant solution.

 

[GenuineXP]

Hmm... I disabled and then uninstalled the extra floppy drive from the Device Manager and sure enough it's gone, but I'm not sure if it'll come back.

(I'd still like to know how to hide the drive, however. Thanks. )

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Yes it's using explorer policy's in the registery, since it's gone and I dont know the key off hand we will leave it at that : )

 

[GenuineXP]

Haha, okay.

After uninstalling the floppy it came back! I've just left it disabled.