AHCI on Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP - HELP!

1kiwi · 4 Apr 2008 at 13:46

Note: This post has been replicated here. I have replicated it here as i think my new question (below) is probably more suited to the hard drive gurus! Anyways:

Hi Guys,

I have bought a 74 GB raptor (as a boot drive) as i already have a number of other slower drives that store the bulk of my data. My plan is to buy 2 X 320 F1s later and RAID them. However, i have a new problem.

Can anyone tell me how to setup AHCI mode for my raptor using vista 64 on the P5K Premium? I have the below setup which is waiting at home for me to setup this weekend. Basically, i just want to get the most out of my raptor.

I have read through the **- Official Asus P5K Thread -** which suggests that i simply turn it on within the bios and then boot from the vista business X64 DVD. Is this correct?

Furthermore, is there anything that i should activate within the P5K bios prior to installing vista?

I was going to flash the bios to version 0504. Is this still the killar bios to use?

Cheers,

Paul

rpstewart · 4 Apr 2008 at 14:05

Yeah, all you do is enable AHCI then install Vista. In theory Vista should have the necessary drivers to install on an AHCI disk but I would get the latest ones onto something readable by the Vista install just in case.

1kiwi · 4 Apr 2008 at 14:46

Thank you! I thought that this might be the case, however i just want to get as much of my worries out of my way before i build!

fobose · 4 Apr 2008 at 15:39

How are you planning on setting up RAID later on?

After reading the thread you linked to, I would presume your going to be using the onboard controller. This wont work if you have already set the SATA ports to AHCI. You need to set them to RAID to be able to use them. I have the P5K-E wifi and am using RAID 1, and have a non-raid 300GB drive which allows me to hot swap the drive in windows (hot swapping is a feature of AHCI, so it would appear setting the controller to RAID allows the use of RAID and on non raided drives AHCI.

1kiwi · 5 Apr 2008 at 18:07

fobose said:
How are you planning on setting up RAID later on?

After reading the thread you linked to, I would presume your going to be using the onboard controller. This wont work if you have already set the SATA ports to AHCI. You need to set them to RAID to be able to use them. I have the P5K-E wifi and am using RAID 1, and have a non-raid 300GB drive which allows me to hot swap the drive in windows (hot swapping is a feature of AHCI, so it would appear setting the controller to RAID allows the use of RAID and on non raided drives AHCI.

Thank you for the advice fobose. I havn't got the drives so i assume that i can not set my raptor to RAID just yet?

1kiwi · 5 Apr 2008 at 18:12

All,

I have a new question if thats OK.

I'm trying to setup AHCI on this P5K and have set the following settings:

MAIN - AHCI Config - AHCI Port 1 - Hard Disk, AHCI Port 2 - ATAPI CD-ROM
MAIN - SATA Config - Configure SATA as AHCI
ADVANCED Onboard Device Configuration - J-Microm eSATA/PATA Controller [ENABLED]
---------- Controller Mode: AHCI

So far this is all i've changed. What do you guys think? Does it sound right?

fobose · 5 Apr 2008 at 23:36

Does it allow you to change what mode for a specific port? I dont have the premium board so perhaps thats one of the advantages with the board. Either way, setting my ICH8 (or 9?) to RAID allows me to hotswap my other drives which I havent configured as RAID.

P.S I had a lot of problems with the JMicron controller, I now have the latest drivers and it seems okay, However when I have an external drive connected every 30mins or so I get a "stutter" in CSS and CNC3 (and probably all other games), but when its not connected I dont get any problems.

1kiwi · 6 Apr 2008 at 19:39

Thanks fobose. I benched my raptor and the results look pretty good:

Can you advise on how i might check as to whether AHCI is enabled and working for the drive? I'm using Vista 64.