BIOS Setup

bigmck · 30 Dec 2010

I have two SATA hard drives. I was poking around in the BIOS yesterday and noticed that they were setup IDE instead of AHCI. I am not sure what either does and did not want to change anything without asking. When I first got my PC, it had XP installed, so I am thinking that is why IDE is set. Do I need to change it to AHCI? I am not having any problems. Would it be of any great advantage to change it? I understand that after the OS is installed, it is a problem to switch to AHCI. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks,

brady · 30 Dec 2010

My experience with IDE vs AHCI with windows 7 is that the OS won't install to any drives under the IDE setting. I had to enable AHCI with sata drives for the OS to see the drives.

AHCI is more for developement then anything else. I see no I/0 increase/decreases with either option. Just installation problems.

bigmck · 30 Dec 2010

brady said:

My experience with IDE vs AHCI with windows 7 is that the OS won't install to any drives under the IDE setting. I had to enable AHCI with sata drives for the OS to see the drives.

AHCI is more for developement then anything else. I see no I/0 increase/decreases with either option. Just installation problems.

I didn't have any problems installing Win 7 even though it was set IDE. I guess I will just leave well enough alone.

Brink · 30 Dec 2010

AHCI would be the better option if you have SATA HDD's or SDD's. It will enable the advanced features like "Smart" and "Hot plugging".

Usually you must do this before installing Windows, but you can give it a try at AHCI to see if you are still able to boot into Windows. If not, then just switch it back to IDE.

This is a good read: AHCI vs IDE

bobkn · 30 Dec 2010

bigmck said:

brady said:

My experience with IDE vs AHCI with windows 7 is that the OS won't install to any drives under the IDE setting. I had to enable AHCI with sata drives for the OS to see the drives.

AHCI is more for developement then anything else. I see no I/0 increase/decreases with either option. Just installation problems.

I didn't have any problems installing Win 7 even though it was set IDE. I guess I will just leave well enough alone.

I've not had any problems installing Win7 to a SATA drive in IDE mode. However, I see a small performance gain in AHCI.

It's possible to switch modes without re-installing Windows:

Error message when you start a Windows 7 or Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE"

I don't know whether things would be the same with your motherboard, which uses an SiS chipset. It may be worth a try, although it won't be completely free of all risk.