windows 7 - Disable possibility to eject internal hardrives

I recently installed Windows 7 Home Premium and suddenly saw that I could eject my internal hard drives:

With my previous installation (Professional), this was not possible. How could a (by definition) less advanced version of an operating system suddenly allow such a function? I didn't change anything in my computers bios, uefi, hardware - just the os version.

Anyway, I don't like that this is possible and I don't want to see the icon for my internal drives - how can I remove it? Of course, it should still show for external drives connected via USB/eSATA.

Answer

Install the latest Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver or use the TreatAsInternalPort workaround.

Regedit your way to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\services\msahci

and create a new KEY called "Controller0" inside Controller0, create a new KEY called "Channel0" Now inside Channel0, create a new DWORD called "TreatAsInternalPort" set this value to "1" (this sets SATA port 0 (Drive C)to no longer show up in "Safely Remove Hardware")

Now, go back into the Controller0 folder again. inside Controller0, create a new KEY called "Channel1" Now inside Channel1, create a new DWORD called "TreatAsInternalPort" set this value to "1" (this sets SATA port 1 (Drive D)to no longer show up in "Safely Remove Hardware")

And so on, until all internal SATA ports are set to be treated as Internal. My motherboard has 6 SATA ports, so I have set Channel0 to Channel5.

(Imagesource: overclock.net)