Change IDE to AHCI in BIOS - Much better performance

nate42nd said:

...I contacted Patriot with a MINOR problem I was having with slow writes for flash player temp files and they immediately told me to send them the drive and sent me a new one. I'm not quite sure it needed to be RMAd but I am just setting up the new one today...

Please report here if the issue was resolved with the drive replacement.

nate42nd said:

I believe during install you have to be in AHCI if you plan to switch back and forth between the two

No u dont. If u install in IDE or RAID mode and then change the registry to AHCI later on windows will detect the registry changes made and install the drivers needed on next boot.

I also installed Win7 in IDE mode on my acer one d250 netbook (works pretty smooth) then changed the reg values and "rebootet into ahci" no problems. no significant improvements either :)

I recently built a computer using an Asrock X58 Extreme mobo. I installed Windows 7, but realized only afterward that the mobo's default setting for the HDDs was IDE rather than SATA.

I followed the registry hack instructions to change the "start" paramater for the MSAHCI driver to "0" (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"), rebooted, changed the BIOS setting to AHCI and everything worked fine. The SATA drivers loaded and things were looking good!

However, a few days later I had a problem with going into "sleep" mode. The computer hung, and after several minutes I just switched if off and rebooted.

Now, I cannot get it to boot properly with the BIOS in AHCI mode. The registry entries are still the same as when AHCI was working, but it will not boot in SATA mode. I get the message "Problem loading OS". Changing the BIOS back to IDE allows me to boot.

Any ideas as to what went wrong (was it the hard shutdown that messed me up?), and any ideas on how to get SATA working again?

Thanks.

What is the driver support like for AHCI?

Did you get a WIn7 driver from MS or mobo maker?

WHere did it initially load from? DVD Driverstore or provided by you from where?

This is something I've wondered, having dealt with some of these here but never done it myself yet.

HammerHead said:

I have ran a raid 1 config on my last two rigs. Twice I have had a problem. I tried to install a new disk and was not successful. I resorted to other backups etc. to solve the problem. I am cosidering on the new Win 7 install to scrap raid and go to another scheme for saving my operating system in case of a catastrophic failure.

Cons for raid:
speed reduction
uses up an extra disc

I think if I took the extra disk and put it in a dock and cloned the os to it once in a while. In the event of failure I could just replace the disk.

Does this sound reasonable?

Hi, Sounds like I've had similar problems. My PC was built for me with RAID 1 config. Here's my PC info:

- Processor : Intel i5 650 Dual Core 3.20 GHz Cache 4MB Threads: 4
- Hard Drives (2) : SEAGATE BARRACUDA 3.5” INTERNAL 500GB 16 MB SATA 3 (formerly Raid 1 Config) P/N: 9SL142-302
- Mother Bd : ASUS PRO P7P55D-E (Raid 0,1,5,10 capable)
P/N: 90-MIBBN0-G0AAY00Z
- Memory : OCZ 4GB DDR-3 P/N: OCZ30B1600LV4GK Speed: 1600M Unbuffered Timing: 9-9-9-24 1.65V
- Video Card : ZOTAC GeFORCE 9500 ZT-95TEK2M-FSL 1GB GDDR2
- DVD Drive : SAMSUNG 22x DVD-RW

When I first started using my PC (RAID 1) , it ran error-free for about 4 months, then an intermittent problem appeared. The PC would freeze up. Upon reboot, the Intel Matrix Storage Console utility would report "array errors" in the RAID 1 array and would do the self-rebuild of the array. The intermittent freeze-up errors would continue but with no apparent pattern in their frequency. The problem that I had though was that after one of the freeze-up problems, the RAID 1 wouldn't resume upon reboot. The Intel Matrix Console would report "plug-in disabled" and as a layman, when it comes to RAID knowledge, I couldn't recover the Raid array as I'm not familiar enough with RAID to recover the array. My PC has a 2-yr warranty so I took it to the store and they said the problem was the GForce Video Board overheating as the fan onboard was not running. They installed a new/differnt Video card.

The PC ran (still RAID 1 config) for almost 2 months without any issues, then the original symptom intermittent freeze-up problem returned. I disabled RAID 1 in the BIOS as a troubleshooting step to eliminate RAID as a possible source of the intermittent problem.

So far, PC's running ok but it'll have to run at least 4-6 months, imo, before I can declare it "fixed" and say that RAID 1 was the problem.

I bought a couple of hot-swap HD racks, mainly for ease of occasional HD cloning. So I gave up on RAID 1 for now as, with a home PC, I plan on cloning on a 3-month basis with "Acronis" 2011 software. That'll be good enough for me without RAID as I always backup daily data files as most do (Outlook PST, etc).

I've been trying to catch up with the AHCI vs IDE modes. I'm still running IDE mode in BIOS.

The question that I have about the BIOS setting comparisons is:

I have SATA drives in my PC. My BIOS is set to IDE. Does that mean that I'm actually running my HD's and DVD Drive in "IDE speed" mode even though my devices are connected to my Mother Bd SATA ports?

I haven't tried changing the BIOS setting yet, still taking notes about this as I'm going to be careful in the registy editor.