Windows 7 - AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

Hello M1GU31,

thanks for the tutorial -
i am baffled by how to load/install the AHCI drivers i downloaded from Asus for an M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 board..
i've tried with Device Mgr but i can't get them to install. i have Asus x64 cat, inf and sys files on a thumb drive.

too bad - i know how to change the BIOS configuration to AHCI, but of course without the drivers installed the cursor just blinks at me when i try to boot ... so i go back to IDE.

i'd love to solve this , any help appreciated.

Michael

I currently have 3 SATA HDD's configured as IDE in my BIOS. One for the OS and two storage. I'm looking to transfer my OS over to my new SSD. In the BIOS, I can't designate the SSD as AHCI without it changing all of my SATA drives to AHCI. Should there be a way to designate only the SSD as AHCI or do I have to let it change all of the drives to that? If so, will this hurt anything and how do I go about doing this safely?

Would it be easier/better to change the BIOS to AHCI and reinstall Windows 7 on the SSD? Or can I move the OS to the SSD (using Paragon's Migrate OS to SSD) using the current SATA configuration as IDE, change the appropriate registry settings in Windows to AHCI, then reboot and change the BIOS to AHCI?

The AHCI setting will be for all drives.

It won't hurt anything, you might see an improvement in HDD performance.
I would recommend it.

The reason I ask is because of the warnings of changing AHCI and possibly getting BSOD's and data failures. However, I want to make sure that won't happen with my storage drives. They are far too important.

Hi all -
i was very excited to read that you CAN install.run AHCI after installing Windows 7 ... and am eager to try it

BUT

step 4 in the tutorial on page 1 did not work for me.

4) Now you'll need to restart the PC and go into the BIOS and enable AHCI; when Windows boots up it will finish installing the AHCI drivers.

it didn't.

does anyone have any help with how to use device manager or some other method to install the AHCI drivers? i'm not sure what i'm doing wrong ...

as i have mentioned, i have Asus x64 ahci.cat, .inf and .sys files on a thumb drive ready to go - but HOW ? is the ahci.sys driver the only one i need to worry about? how do you get it to install? Windows says my drivers are up to date, and when i select these files, it won't install these files using Dev Mgr ...

thanks for your time and expertise ...

Michael

Changed over to AHCI from IDE just now. My main OS drive is a 150GB WD Raptor SATAII. No change in WEI score (still 5.9) and transfer speeds went down about 3-4% across the board (except for 4KQD32 Read) in CrystalDiskMark. Meh. Didn't really expect anything, but would have been nice.

I wouldn't expect an improvement in the WEI score, because it always rates based on the device with the lowest score., which is not likely to be the hard drive.

EDIT: I was wrong, I have exactly the same WEI score as you do, and after checking the lowest score is the hard drive, but I doubt that would change much, unless one had an SSD.

I thought I had read it improved some people's WEI, but wasn't sure. Anyway, not too worried about it, just didn't do much for me, and might have even set things back a few notches. Nothing noticeable, though.

For what it's worth, I'm currently in the process of setting up AHCI myself. As far as I can tell, there is no noticeable improvement in the general OS function, except that it does seem to boot a little faster than before.