Windows 7 - SSD and AHCI

Recently it was suggested to me that AHCI doesn't offer enough benefit to be particularly worthwhile. That's fine. Am ok to turn it off.

I have purchased a new SSD drive - OCZ Vertex 3 120gb. I will format it as a single partition.

On the OCZ site it said to disable AHCI as it can cause problems. On another website it implied that trim wont work unless it's on, and of course NCQ wont work as that's an AHCI feature.

The question is - who is right? Do I leave AHCI off, or must I turn it on if I want the best from my SSD?

Pro AHCI
tips and tricks for installing Win 7 on a brand new SSD - Overclockers Forums

Anti AHCI
http://www.ocztechnology.com/res_old...ng-Up-SSDs.pdf

thanks
Tanya

I am not sure about that article, and have never seen it before. It has no date on it and if you will notice it makes constant reference to Vista SP1 and XP. Which would indicate it is an older article. The problem with OCZ Forums is determining whether the articles you read are about Gen 1, Gen 2 and Gen 3 devices. It can be rather confusing and they are not separated on the forums. And it makes a big difference in how they are handled. I have a Vertex2 in AHCI and it works great and i get expected numbers. I also have an Intel X25-M and 2 Crucial M4's. They are also in AHCI mode. Most everyone I am aware of are running their drives in AHCI without issue.

EDIT: Most people report better performance in AHCI over IDE. I know some say they see no difference, but most do. Some problems arise in doing a secure erase. Most programs I am aware of that do a secure erase require the drive to be 'Hot Plugged' to unfreeze the drive so a secure erase can be done. As far as I know, Hot Plugging is not supported in IDE mode but is supported in AHCI.

Ok. I'll install in AHCI mode and see how I go..

Hopefully be back online tomorrow..

Nothing wrong with using AHCI at all.

You will/may need this tutorial. Turn on AHCI first in Windows then in the Bios as explained in tutorial.

AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

This is a good all around tutorial if you wish to double check your steps, alignment etc.
SSD - Install and transfer the Operating System

Mike

Tanyam, Let us know how it goes. And don't over tweek the system. Windows does a good job of setting things up pretty well.

I was always told that AHCI needed to be enabled for Windows 7 to auto-detect the fact you were using an SSD and configure itself accordingly. Not that IDE mode wouldn't work, but then you'd have to configure the OS manually for the SSD drive.

DeaconFrost

I installed my Intel in IDE mode then switched Windows to AHCI then the Bios per WHS tutorial I posted above.
Windows did recognize and install SATA drivers for the SSD in the beginning.
I was setting an Image.

Fresh install from Windows disk I'm not sure????
I can't find anything in our forum tutorials one way or the other. Strange.

You can enable AHCI to do a clean install. If you clone the old OS or restore an image, they don't have the AHCI drivers in them. If you clean install in AHCI mode, they are installed during the OS install.

Yes, on a fresh install with AHCI enabled before the install, the drive is setup properly and the OS configures itself accordingly.