AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

wakeboardr116 said:

Thanks. Thats pretty much exactly what the BIOS says. It has RAID autodetect and RAID ON. Right now its on RAID Autodetect.

I have my SSD on port 0 and my HDD on port 1. Then on port 2 I have my disk drive.

I'm not sure if certain ones are dedicated to raid or not, but port 0 is blue, ports 1,3, and 4 are black, but port 2 is white. Not sure if that means anything there.

Thanks for the links. I'll read through those as soon as I get a chance.

I did a lengthy search on the colors of Dells SATA ports, asked Dell support, in the end the only answer I got was the colors don't mean anything.

As usual, one thread says RAID Autodetect means AHCI is enabled, the next thread says RAID Autodetect is PATA (IDE) so no AHCI.

You might try Dell XPS support, you might get an answer.

wakeboardr116 said:

Dave76 said:

wakeboardr116 said:

Thanks. Thats pretty much exactly what the BIOS says. It has RAID autodetect and RAID ON. Right now its on RAID Autodetect.

I have my SSD on port 0 and my HDD on port 1. Then on port 2 I have my disk drive.

I'm not sure if certain ones are dedicated to raid or not, but port 0 is blue, ports 1,3, and 4 are black, but port 2 is white. Not sure if that means anything there.

Thanks for the links. I'll read through those as soon as I get a chance.

I did a lengthy search on the colors of Dells SATA ports, asked Dell support, in the end the only answer I got was the colors don't mean anything.

As usual, one thread says RAID Autodetect means AHCI is enabled, the next thread says RAID Autodetect is PATA (IDE) so no AHCI.

You might try Dell XPS support, you might get an answer.

Thanks for all the help. I was able to find this thread XPS430 & Win7 - SATA - Disk Drives (HDD, CD/DVD, Blu-ray) Forum - Disk Drives - Dell Community on dells support site which explained it some. I tried out the updated intel drivers it linked to but still cant find one that works. I posted a relpy asking about it but have yet to recieve a response.

Is there a way to find out which controller device my board has (i.e. ICH8, ICH9R, ICH9M etc..) I think that could be part of the problem. I just dont know which one to choose from the list after I load the newer driver in device manager.

Howdy.

Have a look at the link below, SIW is an excellent app to find your system info, it'll even run from a USB stick and it's free.

SIW - System Information for Windows

wakeboardr116 said:

Thanks. It says my southbridge is ICH9R, which I thought it was. So I guess that is not part of the problem.

Glad I could help mate.

wakeboardr116 said:

Dave76 said:

wakeboardr116 said:

Thanks. Thats pretty much exactly what the BIOS says. It has RAID autodetect and RAID ON. Right now its on RAID Autodetect.

I have my SSD on port 0 and my HDD on port 1. Then on port 2 I have my disk drive.

I'm not sure if certain ones are dedicated to raid or not, but port 0 is blue, ports 1,3, and 4 are black, but port 2 is white. Not sure if that means anything there.

Thanks for the links. I'll read through those as soon as I get a chance.

I did a lengthy search on the colors of Dells SATA ports, asked Dell support, in the end the only answer I got was the colors don't mean anything.

As usual, one thread says RAID Autodetect means AHCI is enabled, the next thread says RAID Autodetect is PATA (IDE) so no AHCI.

You might try Dell XPS support, you might get an answer.

Thanks for all the help. I was able to find this thread XPS430 & Win7 - SATA - Disk Drives (HDD, CD/DVD, Blu-ray) Forum - Disk Drives - Dell Community on dells support site which explained it some. I tried out the updated intel drivers it linked to but still cant find one that works. I posted a relpy asking about it but have yet to recieve a response.

Is there a way to find out which controller device my board has (i.e. ICH8, ICH9R, ICH9M etc..) I think that could be part of the problem. I just dont know which one to choose from the list after I load the newer driver in device manager.

Glad you found out that you have a X48 Express Chipset/ICH9R.

Have a look at the 4th post in this thread:

Thanks to SmoothSL for posting this in other forums.
Instructions to turn on RAID and to use the eSata port on your XPS 420

If there is anything different in these instructions, you can try it again.

The procedure for switching to 'RAID on' for the XPS 420 will be the same for your XPS 430.

You will get more help on the Dell site if you copy your first post and make a new thread.

I have a rather interesting twist to toss your way about seeing the AHCI mode when needing to switch back to the Native ide mode when first getting the new build up and running here. When switching to the AHCI Windows startup was actually bogged down on the first Sata III being tried out for a main host drive.

Later when a hardware change forced a clean install that went on HD#0 being a Sata II and saw the Native ide mode as named in the bios here used instead. I'm curious about the effect of now switching back to AHCI and using the guide here for the registry change.

Hello Night Hawk.



If you're asking if you can change from IDE to AHCI in a clean install (i.e. installed as IDE) of course you should be able to, that's the purpose of this tutorial.

When first installing 7 on the new build it was set to AHCI ending with a very sluggish response until set to the Native ide setting on the bios here.

With the registry value change and reset to AHCI the startup repair was unable to correct the new startup problem seen with the present installation resulting in a square command prompt screen appearing in a brief second with a blue trim on the border before the instant restart.

Your assumption on this being used on a clean install and not for any existing installation is quite correct. All I could do however was give a look for the present one.