Relacionado, para impedir que o disco rígido apareça como removível no Windows XP, a resposta de aqui (modificando o registro), funcionou para mim:
Real removable devices (USB) still
show up as normal, but it removes the
internal SATA controller drives from
being displayed.
For nForce chipsets,
you can add the following to registry:
In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \
CurrentControlSet \ Services \ nvata
,
add DWORD DisableRemovable
, set to 1.
Reboot.
64-bit systems use nvata64.
Some chipsets might use nvatabus
instead.
This doesn't work with VIA
chipsets (driver vide or videX64), the
only option I've found for them is to
use older drivers that don't support
SATA hotplug.