Hot swappable Drives not being detected:

[Waaib]

I have two identical laptops (Dell D620's). The laptops have a bay on the side that lets you swap a DVD/CD drive for a second / external harddrive.

The one laptop will allow me to swap the DVD with the HDD and back again while the laptop is running and automatcially detect both drives.

The other allows me to 'safely remove hardware' but when I swap the drives it doesn't pick the new one up until I reboot. I've checked evert setting I can think of in the OS and BIOS and both machines seem to be the same.

Any ideas?

 

[Waaib]

Good question it appears.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Do you know how to operate Knoppix? My suggestion is to boot to Knoppix on the laptop which gives the issue and see if Knoppix will pick it up when removed/reinserted.

If it does, then there might be an obscure setting in Windows which prevents the drive from being picked up.