Numerous "ATA channels" listed under "eject hardware safely on VM

[DaveMelnyk]

Hi everyone:

    Just created a new WIndows 7 Pro VM (clean install) as a guest under Workstation 10 running on a windows 7 Pro host system. While copying a large number of files across the network to a data drive for the VM I noticed the tell tale noise of what sounded like a USB item being ejected and then reconnected. When I checked the "Remove hardware safely" icon on the VM there is a huge list indicating "Eject ATA channel 0" through channel 29? There do not appear to be any valid items associated with these items. There are also various other items which appear to be standard items for the VM. I don't have this under other VM's, although most of those were created under earlier versions of VMware Workstation and then upgraded to Workstation 10. Is this normal? Or is something running wild on this VM?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Regards, Dave Melnyk

[dariusd · Accepted solution]

Hi Dave,

It's "normal" in that the majority of our virtual PCI/PCIe and SATA devices are hot-pluggable.  Further explanation (and workarounds, if you find it distracting) are in this thread: Workstation 10: Windows "Safely Remove" Gone Wild

We've had a few questions about this lately, and we've had discussions about whether we might end up adding a checkbox to control whether these devices are hot-pluggable by default.

In the meantime, feel free to either ignore them or use the workarounds in the first thread I linked above.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[DaveMelnyk]

Thanks dariusd:

  I had not come across this as various other VMs were converted up from Workstation 9 and before, so did not show all the additional channels. This VM was done from scratch. I was concerned as one of my other VMs had developed a nasty habit of doing a BSOD when trying to to a symlink to a network share. So started rebuilding a new VM as I have not been able to resolve the symlink problem.

Regards, Dave Melnyk