AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

I came across AHCI in my Bios..so there is a slight performance improvement right?

bagavan said:

I came across AHCI in my Bios..so there is a slight performance improvement right?

If you see the AHCI option in your BIOS, that means your motherboard supports SATA drives and quite possible the RAID features (AHCI is essentially a RAID function that can be used without requiring a RAID array to be set up).

As to which interface your harddrive uses, check it this way: right-click on 'Computer', select 'Computer Management', on the left select 'Device Manager', and on the right expand the 'Disk Drives' section.

If you could post a screenshot of that window so we can see the harddrive model numbers, we should be able to tell you whether or not your drive is SATA or IDE.

The only other method I can think of off-hand is for you to open your case and look at what cable the drive connects to the motherboard with.


Also, to help us help you, you might want to fill in your system specs, I'd suggest using Speccy to get the information (it's free and shows a good amount of information).

I am posting a screenshot of my hard disk model..

Bare Foot Kid said:

Hello bagavan.





This, in the snip below, is what ZaLiTH is asking for, if yours says "ATA" like mine then you may be able to use this function; also have a look at these articles, at the links below to get a better understanding of some of the functions of the AHCI controller.

Advanced Host Controller Interface

Native Command Queing

click to enlarge

Thanks BFK.. I'm at work on my *cough cough* crappy XP machine at the moment. Otherwise I would've put up an example screenshot of that...

bagavan said:

I am posting a screenshot of my hard disk model..

I don't even need to Google that one.. Lol. Western Digital Blue drive, 160GB SATA. So, in short; yes, you can use AHCI and yes, you may quite possibly see a small improvement in performance.

One thing I'd suggest, read my comments (and maybe the posts above and below it to get a better idea of the conversation that went on) over here (link). Using AHCI doesn't guarantee a performance boost.

what about raid?is it available?

bagavan said:

what about raid?is it available?

That would depend on your motherboard; your motherboard would have to support RAID. You can get your motherboard make and model number from Device Manager as well, or if you get Speccy (link in my post above).

Just keep in mind if you do want to set up RAID, you need at least two drives, the closer they are in make / model / size the better. But to do so, whatever information you currently have on them will be lost when creating the RAID array... So unless you're going to buy two new drives and set up RAID from the start, or have enough space to backup everything to a separate drive, it isn't really too practical to try set it up.

first off, greetings,

So I followed the steps as mentioned in post 1 BUT when I get to step 4 and despite several restarts, I only see pic1 (installing) without the notes for a restart next to ata channels 1,0,2 and have never seen pic2 in step 4 (driver installation which reads "ready to use")..

I think that I should also mention that when in my bios, the Asus P5KC, although provides a listing for sata configuration, (and the manual notes both IDE and ACHI) ACHI is nowhere to be seen !!! I can only find it in "Advanced device configuration" under the J-Micron eSATA/PATA controller.. which is what I changed and saw some of the drivers being installed..

any assistance would be appreciated..

Hi Dave..
Are you sure, did I misunderstand the following?