That was more a generalized statement on sata controller driver sets not individual drivers since you would simply go to the board manufacturer's own support site for the various updates if not found in the MS optional. Asrock should have the AHCI driver available at their support site. ASRock > Products > Motherboard > 880GM-LE > Download
I was looking at doing this on my previous rig, but on my new rig I built yesterday, ACHI was automatically chosen for me. I am not using an SSD drive for my boot (look at specs).
With the board here I had just seen a clean install of 7 go on and simply made the setting change and watched as everything went through the motions automatically with a prompt to restart once Windows finished up. The funny thing was seeing both Sata II drives installed as SCSI devices while a pair of Sata III drives still remain in the Native ide mode.
So far everything has been running smouth while it did add a few seconds onto the post tests as the two OS drives are now being listed separately from the other pair. The mode is actually an old performance method used back in the 90s when businesses would see SCSI arrays created for boosting access times with storage drives. Often those are still seen available as external as well as internal setups.
After running my screen capture software (HyperCam2) this morning and getting massive 30-40 second delay's worth of audio sync in the resulting .avi files, reverting to IDE mode in BIOS and M$ IDE drivers for all drives cleared up the problem.
Looking carefully through AMD's driver packages, I was a bit surprised to find only AHCI and RAID drivers for Win 7, but nothing for IDE or IDE-compatible SATA. Guess M$'s generics are "good enough".
Last edited by OvenMaster; 14 Jul 2012 at 17:38.
I would think the Asrock support page's sata controller and other updates would have what you need there. Those are typically bundled driver sets since anything ide is controlled through the board itself.
As far video captures here I've captured in avi as well as mpeg II in either the Native ide mode used for 2yrs. and then lately switching to the AHCI mode and not one problem. I suspect the screen capture program itself has it's own needs and why it refused to work for you.
Performance wise in general I would have to say I haven't been seeing any great performance boost in either mode having just seen a clean install of Windows. That alone cleaned up a lot of clutter from the previous install. The transition went smooth however with no hiccups seen so far.
I did go to the ASRock page and downloaded the All-In-1 driver package. Unzipping it and looking through the drivers shows that only AHCI and RAID drivers are included. There simply are no IDE or PATA drivers from AMD for my SB710 chipset offered, even as far back as the ASRock package from April 2010. I can't find any anywhere, even on AMD's site, after searching for four days, either.
Using AHCI, the only improvements that were noticeable was a very slight speed increase when moving or copying files from one HD to another. But when using my screen capture software, I did notice that the HD light stayed on continuously. In IDE mode, the light would go "blip...... blip......blip....." about every three seconds. *shrugs*
If I ever have to reinstall Windows 7 (God forbid), I'll try the AHCI install route from scratch, but until then, sticking with IDE mode works best for me.
The software I run here of course goes along with the tv tuner/capture card where I was running into burn to disk problems until sticking an old cd burner in and whamo it worked. The same for the newly clean install of 7 set for the Native ide and automatically configuring itself well when switching to AHCI.
The part about seeing a continuous HD led busy all the time shows you may have a program glitch to tend with since it is taking up the cpu time as well as wanting to write to the drive but unable to. It usually turns out to be some problem with the present install of a program rather then the mode the drives are run in or the type of drive you have.
I have an SSD coming for my son's Dell Precision 670. It's running 64bit win 7 pro. It have 8 gigs of ram and I will be installing OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-180G 2.5" 180GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) once it arrives. I have read that the ahci needs to be enabled but don't see it in the bios. Can anyone tell me if this SSD drive will work as designed? Is this tutorial exactly what I'll need? I will be using this as his primary drive and a 150 gig sata drive as his pictures and songs drive. I will also be installing this video card in the next few weeks. ZOTAC AMP! ZT-50302-10M GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card. Any advice anyone can give me would be appreciated.
The board on that model includes a SCSI connector I see. "11 SCSI connector (SCSI)" 11 is Item #11 seen in the general information seen at Documentation
If you scroll about half way down the Dell support page under "Ssytem Setup Options" you will see which options in the bios setup deal with the AHCI under SCSI there on the page seen at Documentation
The first is "SCSI Controller Available on the Dell Precision 670 computer.This field enables and disables the integrated SCSI controller."
The second to note is "SATA Operation Configures the operating mode of the integrated hard drive controller." This is where to look for the mode settings while the first would be for enabling or disabling the onboard SCSI ccntroller for the main connector.
I don't have options for AHCI in BIOS. Is it turned on by default?
The southbridge chipset reads "MCP61".
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