Setting at IDE or AHCI?

[cyclone3211]

Just received a computer with a ASUS P6X58D-E motherboard, two SATA-III HDD, and two SATA RW Disk drives. The HDD are connected to the SATA-III ports on the motherboard. The BIOS indicates that it is set to IDE and the Marvell 9128 controller is also set to IDE. The first HDD is for programs and the second drive for data.

The Win7 performance showed the HDD @ 5.9 and my other machine with SATA-I @ 5.3. Though that these numbers would be higher for the SATA-III.

Is this setting correct at IDE or should these be set at AHCI?

Secondly, how can I tell if the HDD are operating as a SATA-III?

Win7 Pro is the OS

 

[ignatzatsonic]

You aren't going to get numbers higher than 5.9 for a hard drive unless you switch to an SSD.

Normally, it's best to use AHCI, but I'm not sure that will affect your score numbers.

 

[Wishmaster]

SATA III or SATA II is not going to make much difference for a mechanical Hard Drive. They do not even saturate a SATA II port.

AHCI mode has its advantages,and I would recommend using it. But do not expect it to increase your WEI HD score.
You will not be able to score higher than a 5.9 in WEI with a single mechanical drive, its just its physical limitations.

 

[cyclone3211]

Thank you both for the reply.

I will make the change to AHCI as suggested.

Any particular reason why this was setup for IDE when the OS was installed?

 

[essenbe]

Some boards are just set up for IDE mode by default. You have to change the sata controller BEFORE you install the OS. If you change it to AHCI after installing the OS, your computer may not boot. There is a good tutorial on this site of how to change to AHCI without reinstalling the OS. It works right, I have used it myself. To tell if you are in ahci mode, go to start type in device manager, look under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, expand that, there should be a listing for ahci controller at the bottom if you are in AHCI mode.

 

[Wishmaster]

Ahhh, good catch & TY for pointing that out.
Should have thought about that the fact it needed to be activated before installing.

 

[cyclone3211]

Thank you Essenbe for your reply. As you stated after I made the two changes, 1st to the Storage Configuration and 2ndly to the Marvell 9128 Controller, the machine would not would not boot but indicated an error. Even tried to change just one of these but to no avail. I will go to that posted site and see if I can do it.
Thanks again

 

[essenbe]

I hope it helped.

 

[Sammy888]

You aren't going to get numbers higher than 5.9 for a hard drive unless you switch to an SSD.

Normally, it's best to use AHCI, but I'm not sure that will affect your score numbers.

I was at Costco the other day and there was a HP Desktop there. The Primary HDD score was 6.9. I was amazed and I had to see if this was a SSD drive. It was NOT. It was a Seagate Baracuda 3GB/sec. This compares to my Seagate Baracuda of 5.9.

YOu're right, I did tests on my system with AHCI enabled and disabled and the results were the same.