AHCI? Yay or nay?

MikeHunt79 · 8 Jul 2008 at 17:35

Just bought a new Samsung 1TB F1 drive, and am about to reinstall windows. Now, I'll have to rebuild my XP cd with RAID drivers if I want AHCI to work, so is it worth it? I'm also planning to use Linux on this drive also, but Linux works with no extra drivers needed.

I'm running a c2d on a p965 DS3 for what it's worth.

AbsenceJam · 8 Jul 2008 at 17:47

Hotswapping and issues with ODD's and some chipsets vs. SMART status and same performance.
No reason to use it if you don't need hotswapping.

Vertigo · 8 Jul 2008 at 18:22

Don't you need it to use the drive's write caching feature?

PinkFloyd · 8 Jul 2008 at 18:24

Isn't it needed for Native Command Queueing?

Vertigo · 8 Jul 2008 at 18:27

Deffo needed for NCQ, now you mention it, but the usefulness of this for a single user is debatable.

helmutcheese · 8 Jul 2008 at 18:32

NCQ+Hot Plugging/Swapping.

MikeHunt79 · 8 Jul 2008 at 18:49

For some reason it's not working properly in IDE mode anyway, so I'm gonna have to go down the AHCI route...

Can I still see SMART data and temps with AHCI on?

AbsenceJam · 9 Jul 2008 at 05:40

Vertigo1 said:
Don't you need it to use the drive's write caching feature?

No.

PinkFloyd said:
Isn't it needed for Native Command Queueing?

NCQ makes things slower outside server use.

MikeHunt79 said:
Can I still see SMART data and temps with AHCI on?

Unlikely, some controller BIOS's and controller software show them but it seems that most don't.

MikeHunt79 · 9 Jul 2008 at 11:35

SMART appears to be working for me...

Ok, my Gigabyte p965 DS3 had 6 sata ports, 4 yellow ones which I believe are ICH8 controlled, and 2 purple ones which are JMicron controlled.

Anyway, the only way I could get XP to install was to use the purple connector... Not a problem, but it doesn't appear to be running in the proper UDMA mode:

How do I get it to work in mode 7?

The bench screen looks ok tho, so it's not the end of the world:

AbsenceJam · 9 Jul 2008 at 12:34

That's rather unusual, sure it's using AHCI (drives will appear as SCSI devices in device manager)?

It's in the correct mode, the disk may support Mode 7 but I can't say I've seen a controller that does. It's not like your drive can even approach 133MB/s let alone 512..

MikeHunt79 · 9 Jul 2008 at 13:24

AbsenceJam said:
That's rather unusual, sure it's using AHCI (drives will appear as SCSI devices in device manager)?

It's in the correct mode, the disk may support Mode 7 but I can't say I've seen a controller that does. It's not like your drive can even approach 133MB/s let alone 512..

It shows up as a "SATA SAMSUNG SCSI Disk Device" in Device manager, but it's fast and is working ok so I'll leave it.