Cannot start Win7 in AHCI mode when multiple drives are connected

[Delicieuxz]

Hi, I'm working with a new PC build that uses a 60 GB SSD for its boot drive, and which is also reusing some "old" SATA HDDs for storage.

At the time I installed Windows 7 Ult 64, I had only a new SSD plugged in, and the bios was set to AHCI mode. The installation went fine and I was able to boot into Windows afterwards without issue.

Then, I connected a WD Caviar Black SATA HDD to use as storage, with the SSD being the boot drive. With both of them connected, Windows will not get past the Starting Windows screen.

I made this video of the program before I understood that it was a drive controller issue: Startup problem - YouTube
In it, you can see that Windows boots fine in AHCI mode with just the SSD plugged in, but that when the backup SATA drive is also connected it doesn't get past the Starting Windows screen.

For the record, this Caviar Black HDD was my previous boot OS, and it also has a Win7 install on it (which I've renamed the base folder of), but it is not booting from that HDD. Also, I have tried the same thing with other "old" SATA HDDs that do not have any previous Windows install on them, and the result is the same thing which is shown in the video.

I do not understand why, and don't know what to do about it. All help is appreciated, thank you!

 

[DustSailor]

Have you scoured the BIOS for any other setting relating to AHCI? I seem to recall at least 2 different settings for it on my ASUS motherboard. Also look for any settings that might relate to hard drives, bootup, anything like that. How much of the BIOS did you change from its original settings?

Also, have you gone to the motherboard's manufacturer and installed every last driver for your version of windows? I found this, but it seems like a short list (considering some of these were for different versions of windows)

 

[Delicieuxz]

Hi, and thanks for the reply. I have the latest BIOS version installed, and I changed almost nothing in my BIOS from stock settings. I basically just set up the boot order, and switched AHCI to IDE when Windows refused to boot in AHCI with multiple drives connected. I installed the mobo drivers that came on the CD included with the mobo.

 

[DustSailor]

So the BIOS install was successful? It is usually best to have the most recent mobo drivers installed (manufacturer's website) but I don't think that is the problem here.

You have only 4* internal SATA ports right, and those are 2.0, not 3.0?


EDIT** I just looked it up, and yes, you have all 2.0, not 3.0.

let me research some more

 

[DustSailor]

I would say try going back to IDE, I don't think you will suffer any noticeable performance hit. And you could always go back. I would use this as a last resort just because i favor AHCI. But be careful. Someone messed with his system and when he switched from ahci to ide, he got an error that wouldn't let him boot. You could create a disk image on another drive perhaps and do things to safe guard your data in the event this happens (although you said you cannot boot into windows at all if you connect another drive, right?



Alright, do this. Make sure you have all important windows updates (well, forget about that malicious download tool thing, not important right now). Run sfc /scannow through a cmd prompt

You sure you have all drivers downloaded from that cd?

you don't have a non-working sata cable you are using do you? have you switched cables?

What I am most curious about is the benefit of AHCI for an SSD with a 3Gbps SATA II connection. I know all SSDs benefit from AHCI, but I am not sure how much quicker it would be without a SATA III connection.

You know, I've played with the boot order before, and it messed things up. Be careful there. Don't change the boot order of HDDs and SSDs (if you have, change it back exactly as it was, you may need to have connected all HDDs and SSDs that you have connected up to this point, and then go into BIOS and change it all back to the original). You can reset the BIOS (look it up on google if you don't know how, and before windows boots again, set it back to AHCI if you want to try and keep it).

You should be able to change boot device priority which is hard drive first, usb second, cd third, or however you like. That is of no consequence

PS, I appologize for my rambling, but I was trying to think through how to solve your case and just typed according to my thinking, hopefully something makes sense

 

[Delicieuxz]

So the BIOS install was successful? It is usually best to have the most recent mobo drivers installed (manufacturer's website) but I don't think that is the problem here.

You have only 4* internal SATA ports right, and those are 2.0, not 3.0?


EDIT** I just looked it up, and yes, you have all 2.0, not 3.0.

let me research some more

Yes, the BIOS is updated and running well. I installed all my mobo drivers, though I can check for newer versions.

And you might have checked up a different mobo or an earlier version, but my mobo is an Asus P8P67 Pro Rev 3.1, and it has four SATA3 ports and four SATA2 ports. My SSD is plugged into an Intel SATA3 port, while my 3 SATA HDDs are plugged into SATA2 ports.

you said you cannot boot into windows at all if you connect another drive, right?

In AHCI mode I cannot, but in IDE mode I can.


I just bought a new Caviar Green 2 TB drive for storage, and I'm going to remove 2 of the storage drives I currently have in the PC. I'll see if Windows boots with just the SSD and the Caviar Green drive installed. In the end, though, I'll have the SSD as boot drive, a Caviar Black as app/game drive, and the Caviar Green as storage/backup, so those 3 in combo will need to run on whatever setting, hopefully AHCI. As it is now, I know that the SSD will boot Windows in AHCI if only it's installed, but that when the Caviar Black is also installed, and the BIOS is set to AHCI, it will hang on the Starting Windows screen.

 

[DustSailor]

Oh, your system specs say that you have evga. You should update it (my signature has everything you need in that area). I can possibly help yu further after you've done this. You have the correct drivers right? if you have 64bit windows 7, you have 64 bit drivers...

Follow this tutorial and make sure everything is set right in your setup: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/61869-ahci-enable-windows-7-vista.html?ltr=A

Can you boot with a "newer" drive hooked up to your computer with AHCI enabled? I don't know how old your "older" drives are

 

[Delicieuxz]

Oh, sorry about the profile specs, I've updated them now. Yes, I've checked the registry and the key value is set to 0 for AHCI mode. I just got a Caviar Green 2TB drive, so I'll see if it boots into Win7 with just the SSD and the CG installed. My "older" drives range from 3 - 5 years old, with the Caviar Black being around maybe 3 years. I can't recall if I bought it when I built my last PC (3 years ago), or if I bought it later. It's possibly newer than that, maybe 1.5 - 2 years old.

 

[DustSailor]

do let me know

 

[lehnerus2000]

Are your connectors (power and data) and sockets OK?
Have you tried using different SATA sockets and cables?

I had a problem with a dodgy connection to my one of my DVD drives.
I couldn't boot my machine because of it.

I only discovered it, because the drive light didn't come on (when the PC rebooted).

 

[DGLang]

One possible problem may be that you first set your boot drive order and then set the mode to ACHI.

I had a similar problem on my gigabyte motherboard a couple of days ago when I copied my old boot drive to a new SSD.

In essence, the problem occurs because when you change the access type from IDE to ACHI, a different internal controller is used which in effect changes your booot order because the ACHI mode is now considered as a SCSI type of device which is commmon when one isn't using the IDE mode.

If you check your boot sequence, youmay find that it is now pointing to a different location than what you want.

Once I reset by boot order AFTER setting the BIOS to ACHI, the motherboard instantly found the correct boot drive.

I would hazard that your SSD has an internal disk id other than C: and your old drive still has the C:.

One other thought regarding alignment, While I was still running WIN 7 PRO using a regular hard drive, I simply used the Disk management function under 'my computer\manage\disk manager' to initialize my new SSD and create the new boot partition. Under WIN 7 this does assign the correct alignment.

I then used my backup CD copy of Acronis True Image Home 2011 (ATIH2011)to simply copy my previously backuped WIN 7 OS partition to the newly created partition on the SSD. I did the restore of the OS partition only, not copying the boot part with sector 1. After I copied the OS partition, I then copied the boot part in a seperate step which only takes a couple of seconds.

Note: When ATIH2011 makes a backup copy of a PARTITION, it creates both a copy of the partition and another smaller copy of the boot sector. When doing a 'restore' of a boot partition, do not use the 'CLONE' function, use the partition restore function instead. If your current hard drive (HDD) has multiple partitions on it that you want to copy to a SSD, first 'restore' the partition containing the OS, then the 'boot partition' and then whatever other partitions that you want.

I spent a few days researching how to copy from a HDD to a SSD while maintaining the correct alignment and basically, the way that I did it does work correctly.

Any hard drives other than the boot drive are not affected by changing from IDE to ACHI mode other than working faster.

Finallymotherboards differ in how the use the BIOS and therefore the above procedure might not work correctly. During my ersearch, I did find several other users who did the migration from IDE HDD to a ACHI SSD using the above procedure with no problems at all other than what you have experienced with the boot failure due to the actual controller being invoked which then changes the actual internal address of the new SSD boot drive.

 

[DGLang]

FWIW, my ATTO disk scores for first IDE and then ACHI on my Patriot Pyro unmodified after copying from HDD to SSD.

AS IDE no cache:

As ACHI with no cache:

AHCI using windows cache.

Please note that this on a single SSD attached to Gigabyte motherboard (NO RAID)

 

[Delicieuxz]

Interesting scores, thanks. So AHCI actually gave a very significant speed boost, mostly for reading.

I ended up biting the bullet and reinstalled Windows in AHCI with my HDDs all connected in the manner which I'd like to use them after installation. Now everything is working correctly, and it's very satisfying

I guess the problem might have been something to do with having changed which port my SSD drive was connected to, but I'm pretty sure I changed it back afterwards. Also, interestingly, while my SSD Win7 install initially booted in AHCI mode when only it was connected, after messing about with everything it would no longer boot into Win7 in AHCI even if it were the only device connected. Also, what helped encourage me to just reinstall Windows is that problems became progressively worse, with blue screens and then I couldn't even boot into Windows at all anymore, it would stay on the "Preparing your desktop" screen, and this was after getting a bluescreen while transferring files from one HDD to another. So maybe playing with the ports after installation totally screwed things up (though multiple connected HDDs prevented Win7 booting even right after the initial install), or maybe there was an issue with there being Win7 installed on 2 of the HDDs (though on the old one the directory had been renamed).

Just one of the quirks with setting up a new PC, I guess. Since my reinstall, I haven't had a single problem, everything is running great, and in AHCI mode.

Thanks for the help Dustsailor and DGLang!

 

[DGLang]

I suspect that in your case, you checked to be sure that your BIOS was pointing to the correct drive.

One thing that I have experienced when installing WIN 7 is that if one has a >2.2TB Advanced Format (AF) HDD installed, WIN 7 insists on installing on one of the AF HDDs even though you may have specified another drive and windows doesn't warn you that it actually installed on another drive.

If you do have an AF HDD on your computer and you want to verify that Windows actually wound up where you wanted it, you can check by powering off and unplugging all but your desired boot drive and then booting up again. Obviously if you can boot up you are OK, but if you can't boot up, at least part of your boot partition is on another drive which is now disconnected.

In my case, since I had three AF HDDs installed along with 2 500 gb drives and my SSD, I wound up with bad installs on all of my AF drives as well as the SSD.

I recently spent over a full week trying to find out why WINDOWS wasn't installing on the drive I told it to. The simple soultion was to unplug all of the other drives leaving only the desifred drive available to install on. The reason for the install was that I had just upgraded my motherboard and processor and I needed to install the correct motherboard chipset drivers. I have a very large installation with dozens of programs and it is a major pain and very time consuming to do a complete install from scratch along with reinstalling all of my programs due to licensing restrictions. I usually just do a sysprep and then install all of the correct drivers, but this time, Windows wasn't cooperating at all.

Even trying to do a 'windows repair' fails with windows trying to put the 'repaired' partition on one of the advanced format drives. Once again, this after one specifies which drive to install on. Windows still doesn't advise which HDD it actually 'repaired'.

One of the reasons it took so long was when I finally got a 'basic' win 7 HP partition installed, I had to reinstall Acronis True Image on that partition to get access to my backups in the 'Acronis Secure Zone'. Once one reinstalls Acronis and directs it to use the 'Secure Zone', Acronis doesn't check to see there is already one existing, but instead creates a new empty 'Secure Zone. with all of the previous backups gone.

A second problem with Acronis that I've experienced is that if you place the backups in a partition that gets defragged and the backup image gets defragged, it lo longer passes 'validation' and is unusable.

The solution to those two problems is to place one's backups in a smaller dedicated partition which never gets defragged and Acronis doesn't create or delete.

 

[DustSailor]

glad its working for you, but sorry you had to take the long route