Switch to SSD Help with AHCI mode and sata drives

lab4

lab4

lab4

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Joined
19 Oct 2010
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73
Ok, so I finally took the plunge and bought an ssd. OCZ Agility 3 120gb.

Had a few issues mapping my OS to it due to it being set as GPT, but i'm now past that and want the best performance.

I have enabled AHCI in windows by editing the registry, but when I enable AHCI in bios, the comp doesn't boot, it cannot find some of my SATA drives, including the SSD which is on the main SATA lead.

Windows 7 64-bit professional, 1 x SSD, 2 X 1tb hdd, 1 x 500gb hdd, 16gb ram, asus m2n-x MB.

The speeds for 4k writes appear to be good, 197mb and 179mb but everywhere says that I need AHCI mode enabled to run best.

I tried updating the intel matrix storage drivers, but they said they were the most up to date.

Any help please
 
The way I set mine up is

ssd only plugged in(+ Optical drive)
set AHCI in bios
Installed windows 7 64bit
Installed chipset then vga drivers
Ran WEI restarted
Checked defrag, but it was already disabled on the ssd
Installed anti virus, all other drivers, windows updates
 
What motherboard are you using?

Oh, use ATTO to bench test, it uses compressed data, you will only see the manufacturers rated speeds with that.

I had a total nightmare setting up my A3, I wont bore you with the details, all good now.
 
when i put it in ahci mode it misses the drive. it comes up with loading operating system, then lists something about "this can only be used for hard drives and removable media" and lists the ssd as a drive, but then goes to a screen that says "cannot boot from media, please remove and try again"

the motherboard is Asus M2N-X
 
Sorry I've been thick, thats the motherboard for a comp i'm building from old bits for my folks.

The proper motherboard is Gigabyte GA-H55-UD3H.

I've been to the site and found a bios driver "F6" That has "Enhanced OC ability".

I've download the .exe and tried to run, but get the error message

"this version of the file is not compatible with the version of windows you are running...." Thats from FLASHSPI.exe

and the other file IATA89ENU.exe gives me the error "this computer does not meet the minimum requirements for this software"

I'm lost and stuck,. PLease help
 
That motherboard only has sata II, you're not going to see much speed past what you are already getting so don't panic too much, My A3 in sata only shows 210 max, only when I put it into the sata III port (and while using atto) do I start to see full 500 speeds.


The drivers you have downloaded are for putting on removable media and pointing your OS to them while doing a fresh OS install.


When you did the reg edit, how many things did you change to 0? IIRC there are two values you can change, I think each corasponds to different controllers, one is Machi and the other is Iastor... or something like that.


Edit: If you have time to kill, make a 20GB partition on the drive restart the comp, into bios, change to AHCI and see what happens when you do a fresh install onto it.
 
Last edited:
Many thanks for the reply. I know i'm not going to see speeds fly as its only sata 2, but theres so many people saying do this do that, i thought there must be some truth behind AHCI.

Anyhows, the stuff i edited was

"2a. Click Start (the windows logo in your taskbar) and type regedit in the searchfield.
3a. Open regedit, and do a search for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
4a. Right click on the “Start” entry it found under Msachi, and select “Properties”
5a. The value will most likely say “3″. Change that value to “0″ (zero).
6a. Quit regedit, and reboot your PC. AHCI has now been activated.
2. Activate AHCI in your BIOS"

This is the only bit i have changed and then changed it from ide to ahci in bios.
 
Ok done the above.

Fear rolling through me as bios doesn't detect any hd's! ssd or traditional. Then it shows a new bios screen where it then finds the sata drivers.

Windows boots, with no hd's except os disk, then it finds all of my partitions and drives, all 12 of them!!

reboot, still shows extra bios screen, boots to windows and ran benchmark, shows it to be 15% faster than when in ide mode.

not sure if new bios screen is permanent, but now in ahci mode so many many thanks
 
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