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I am using a Dell latitude 6420 which has a removable hard drive that can be inserted into the side of the unit (where the cdrom drive goes, after removing the cdrom drive). It has a Hitachi HTS545050A7E380 ATA drive inside of it. When I insert this drive module Windows does not make the "inserted device noise" nor does it mount the drive automatically. However, USB keys mount fine, so do CD rom devices. In order to mount this device I have to go to device manager and do "scan for hardware changes." Only then does the drive show up. How can I make windows automatically mount this device, or in what ways can I work around this issue (shortcut to script on desktop to mount it, etc.)d

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I have the same 'problem' with two other systems (A Dell 6500 laptop and a home build i7 920 system). I suspect that this is just the way windows works. In other words: It does not support simple hot plugged drives. – Hennes Aug 26 '12 at 21:42
On my PC I can hotplug any SATA port and it'll always work... Something else must be up. – sinni800 Aug 27 '12 at 1:06

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I am not sure about this particular laptop, but I do remember working with older Dells and having similar issues. The problem is that the device may be USB + some Dell proprietary hardware. In order to hot-swap these devices, there was a utility that you had to download from the website that ran as a service to allow Windows to recognize the changes.

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This is what experience told me, too. For the Dell I used back then there was a driver that made hotswapping possible without having to manually search for that device... Windows alone doesn't do that on this device.. – sinni800 Aug 27 '12 at 1:08

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