AHCI mode no boot from sata optical drives

Lee K · 30 Apr 2011

A strange problem, nothing critical, but I found it annoying that my optical sata drives will not boot from a bootable disk when in AHCI mode in Bios. If I switch the drive mode to native IDE then I can boot just fine from either of the Opitcal Sata drives.

I have done some searching and found this has been a problem out for some builds/MB in the past but you would think with a new MB and Sata controller and such this would no longer be a problem.

If you look at my specs you will see the Gigabyte MB. The documentation is fuzzy on the sata ports. There is a setting to put SATA port 4/5 into some kind of IDE support mode. I currently have the slots 0 - 3, used for all the drives. 0 & 1 for HDD, and 2 & 3 for the optical drives, wondering if I use the 4/5 slots for the SATA and set the bios to the 4/5 ide support if this might solve my little problem.

Has anyone else out there run into a similar problem?

Sardonicus · 30 Apr 2011

Optical drives to my knowledge don't benefit from AHCI.
You have 2 controllers, Intel and Gigabyte.

1. Install SATA hard drives on the Intel controller and set it to AHCI.
2. Install Optical drives to the Gigabyte controller and set it to IDE.

Even if you did set all controllers to AHCI, double check the boot option and make sure that the optical drives are set as the first boot device.

Ideally, the hard drives take advantage of AHCI, so it doesn't matter whether the optical drive is set to AHCI or IDE.

Lee K · 01 May 2011

In looking at the bios again, this is starting to make sense. Its actually an AMD controller, the 890, has native 6Gb/s support, ports 0 - 5 (6 ports high speed). The Gigabyte controller is Sata2 and on the 6 & 7 ports and yes it can be turned to IDE mode for these two ports, which should allow the optical drives to be bootable. This MB has so many ports, it gets a tad bit confusing. I will make the switch in the coming days as I have to do some network wiring, which means down time, and time to open up the case.

Still doesn't make complete sense, but the way AHCI works, like you said optical drives do not achieve any benefit from AHCI mode and in fact I imagine there is no comunication with these older SATA optical drives, not like SSD or platter type SATA storage.

I will post the results but thinking this should be it...

whest · 01 May 2011

Lee K said:

In looking at the bios again, this is starting to make sense. Its actually an AMD controller, the 890, has native 6Gb/s support, ports 0 - 5 (6 ports high speed). The Gigabyte controller is Sata2 and on the 6 & 7 ports and yes it can be turned to IDE mode for these two ports, which should allow the optical drives to be bootable. This MB has so many ports, it gets a tad bit confusing. I will make the switch in the coming days as I have to do some network wiring, which means down time, and time to open up the case.

Still doesn't make complete sense, but the way AHCI work,s like you said optical drives do not achieve any benefit from AHCI mode and in fact I imagine there is no comunication with these older SATA optical drives, not like SSD or platter type SATA storage.

I will post the results but thinking this should be it...

Im sorry i was thinking sata drives when i read the problem but i found this which may help you understand or even fix the problem -
SATA optical drives are not available after you start a Windows Vista-based computer

Mark Phelps · 01 May 2011

Lee K said:

Has anyone else out there run into a similar problem?

Yes ... also have a Gigabyte Mobo with SATA optical drives, and have the same problem ... but slightly different.

I switched the optical drives to the two SATA connectors that are NOT set to AHCI -- and that allowed them to be bootable again. But Win7 Pro kept "losing" the second drive. It would drop from the device list.

So, I reconnected the second optical drive back to an AHCI connector. Works fine, just can't boot from it.

Also, tried the MS KB article -- says "no public hotfixes available".

Hacker101 · 01 May 2011

Try this 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". Worked for me.

Hacker101 · 01 May 2011

Mark Phelps said:

Lee K said:

Has anyone else out there run into a similar problem?

Yes ... also have a Gigabyte Mobo with SATA optical drives, and have the same problem ... but slightly different.

I switched the optical drives to the two SATA connectors that are NOT set to AHCI -- and that allowed them to be bootable again. But Win7 Pro kept "losing" the second drive. It would drop from the device list.

So, I reconnected the second optical drive back to an AHCI connector. Works fine, just can't boot from it.

Also, tried the MS KB article -- says "no public hotfixes available".

As for your problem I think you should check your jumper settings and make sure one (doesn't matter which one) is set to master and the other is set to slave. Your drives should have a diagram for jumper settings on the back if not refere to your user manual or manufacture's website

Mark Phelps · 02 May 2011

As for your problem I think you should check your jumper settings and make sure one (doesn't matter which one) is set to master and the other is set to slave. Your drives should have a diagram for jumper settings on the back if not refere to your user manual or manufacture's website

SATA drives do not have jumpers for Master/Slave -- read the OP's details before offering such a suggestion.

Lee K · 03 May 2011

Just to make things a bit clearer, my SATA optical drives are detected and run perfectly in Windows 7 64 bit, never had a problem in the OS and the bios detects them perfectly, but if you put a Windows install disc in the optical drive and have the board in native AHCI mode, you cannot boot from that disc in the optical drive.

Still seems strange to me that I have to set some ports to IDE mode for the optical drives to be bootable, but I haven't made the switch yet to see if it is going to work... we shall see

Lee K · 21 May 2011

Finally got around to changing the optical drives to GSATA 6 & 7 and bios setting for this to IDE, made no difference, on boot up it skips right past the drives. Only way to boot from an optical disk, is to switch from Native AHCI mode to Native IDE. Interesting thing about making the switch to the GSATA ports is that now the bios shows them both on SATA channel 5 operating as master and slave. Go figure. I have a number of other issues with this motherboard as well so looks like I will have to be contacting GIGABYTE for an explanation.