AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

Dave76

My SSD is my C drive. The is why I got the boost in Performance. I have downloaded the performance software you suggested, but haven't had time to run it yet. When I do I will post the results on the places you said.

Add my kudos for an excellent and straightforward fix! Thanks!

WindowsStar said:

Question: Do these steps work for Windows XP Professional as well?

you can update your SATA controller driver to the AHCI version using the right driver(s) then reboot ur machine and set AHCI in BIOS to enable (whatever the words are in BIOS)

LM2008 said:

no AHCI drivers message appeared or asking to restart, is there anyway to verify is active?

if u can get to windows after setting it then it works.

atlcraig said:

Just an update of what I found out about ahci performance! After I installed and got ahci working I checked for any performance change in Windows 7 hard drives. My drive performance before I changed to ahci was 5.4 and after the change it was still 5.4. I then installed a SSD as my C drive and my drive performance went from 5.4 to 7.1! If I would have known this before I started I don't think I would have changed to ahci. So my advice to anyone wanting to increase the drive performance on their system would be to go out and buy a SSD.

basically SSD is much much faster than harddisk, so the WEI gain is very understandable.

imho and based on my own experience after setting AHCI in win7, benchmarks don't justify real-time performance but i see significant gain in copying large files (mkv files @ 1-8gb)

now the Q : after setting AHCI i got my 2 harddisks showed in the Safely Remove Hardware systray icon. is there any way to solve this? coz i think it's a bit annoying.

siadi said:

now the Q : after setting AHCI i got my 2 harddisks showed in the Safely Remove Hardware systray icon. is there any way to solve this? coz i think it's a bit annoying.

To quote from Wikipedia, and to be honest I thought it would have more on AHCI, but apparently not... Anyway, to explain why AHCI mode shows your drives in the 'Safely Remove Hardware' list:

AHCI is separate from the SATA 3Gb/s standard, although it exposes SATA's advanced capabilities (such as hot-plugging and native command queuing) such that host systems can utilize them.

ZaLiTH said:

siadi said:

now the Q : after setting AHCI i got my 2 harddisks showed in the Safely Remove Hardware systray icon. is there any way to solve this? coz i think it's a bit annoying.

To quote from Wikipedia, and to be honest I thought it would have more on AHCI, but apparently not... Anyway, to explain why AHCI mode shows your drives in the 'Safely Remove Hardware' list:

AHCI is separate from the SATA 3Gb/s standard, although it exposes SATA's advanced capabilities (such as hot-plugging and native command queuing) such that host systems can utilize them.

so the quote is saying that my drives being shown in "safely remove" list due to this hot-plugging capability.. cmiiw. thx man.. then i will have to pay extra attention when removing external devices after this hehehe

siadi said:

so the quote is saying that my drives being shown in "safely remove" list due to this hot-plugging capability.. cmiiw. thx man.. then i will have to pay extra attention when removing external devices after this hehehe

Yup, that is correct.. I've had to do much the same, but at least here we can be glad that MS finally got Windows to show the volume label in the 'Safely Remove Hardware' list! Something that should've been included since XP as far as I'm concerned... You do get quite used to it though.


@ Bare Foot Kid:
Just a thought, but I only just noticed your open post doesn't really mention any reasons or benefits for switching to AHCI.. Thinking about it now, I actually went to Google it and see what AHCI was and what was different to normal SATA when I first found this tutorial.

Perhaps to enhance it a little bit, at the start you could mention a brief description of the NCQ process (more info here) that AHCI uses? Might also be an idea to mention that AHCI also enables hot swapping support for SATA devices.. Just some constructive criticism, hope you don't mind.