AHCI Mode - help?

jongeeone

jongeeone

jongeeone

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Ok, ever since i got my C2D set, which was last year some time i have thought its been sluggish some times, mainly on start up which now takes well over 2mins, also exploring my HDD's, it juse does not feel responsive. I have now noticed my HDD's have been running in IDE mode, i realise this after i have done a HDD bench mark, my Maxtor reading at 55mb/s and my Samsung (primary) reading at 4mb/s (LOL?)

Now im sure this is low, IDE speeds and not SATA1/2.

If i change to AHCI Mode i have to format my primary drive i belive. Is it just a case of changing the mode in the BIOS then re-installing. When it says while installing XP "Press F6 to instal sata" or what ever says can i still skip this and isntall the DS3 sata drivers in windows, as i dont have any sort of floppy drives.

Can anyone give me some guidence here?
 
There is a method, can't remember specifics, for installing the AHCI drivers in your current XP control panel. Then once installed rebooting and switching it on in the bios. If you switch it on without installing the drivers it will fubar the install. If you want to re-install XP from scratch you may need an F6 floppy driver disk, you can get the floppy creator from Intel for different chipsets.

http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-022768.htm

Here's the one for 32 bit XP and P965.

 
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Will i notice any difference? I am going to format probably tomorow and if its not going to make much difference i just install the DS3 sata drives after the installation and run it in IDE i suppose.

It just seems sluggish, start up time has increased LOADS, anything that could have coused this?
 
jongeeone said:
Will i notice any difference? I am going to format probably tomorow and if its not going to make much difference i just install the DS3 sata drives after the installation and run it in IDE i suppose.

It just seems sluggish, start up time has increased LOADS, anything that could have coused this?
Click to expand...
Its there for a reason otherwise its in legacy mode. NCQ and 150/300 MB/s for a start.
 
Running it in "IDE" mode wouldn't cause it to run at 4mb/s. "IDE" speeds your refering to are still capable of 133mb/s (ATA133)! Are both your hard drives using the same sata controller?
 
Yep there bothing useing the same controller, on the DS3 its the one situated on its own, not next to another controller.

This is my primary drive, according to everest its pretty slow eh?

hdd2rd7.jpg


This is my 2nd drive

hdd1pd6.jpg


Now i know the drives arnt the best in the world, but in all fairness that maxtor one has been going for ages, its reliable.

Hope you can help me sort this out?

Cheers :)
 
Yikes that is bad. When you say they are on the controller which is on their own, I take it the ports are coloured Purple? If so thats the Gigabyte controller, I would personally use the Intel ICH controller (yellow/orange) ones.

I think if you enable the Intel ICH controller in the bios (setting it to SATA mode I presume), windows will detect it, then you should be able to just switch your SATA cable to the intel connectors and it should just work - then try a benchmark on that one.

My bios is a lot different especially as its Asus and an old modo so my settings are not the same but mine only give me the options for SATA or RAID - on the intel controller set to SATA doesn't actually require any drivers, from what I remember reading another thread is you need to set it to either Legacy or IDE on the DS3/DS4 boards so give them settings a try.
 
Ok. I have read other threads where people say the yellow/orange connections make their hard drives dog slow but the purple ones (gigabyte) they run fine - I dont see how though!! So perhaps you could try using the gigabye controller?

You could try enabling the controller in bios (if its disabled) then if windows detects it and its not listed as an "unknown device" in device manager you wont need to install drivers for it and can just plug your sata cable in to it and it should work.. if not you could just download the drivers for it from gigabyes website, install them whilst in windows then swap the cable over (once PC is turned off ofc).

<edit>

Found the thread:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17736277&highlight=purple
 
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Well the Gigabyte sata drivers are installed, so its just a case of setting it to AHCI mode, plugging it into the purple controller and booting. Hmm, i'll try this but i thnk ima still do a clean format.
 
Try it first and then do a benchmark and see what results you get - I dont think a format is needed if it fixes the problem!
 
Thinking about it, now i know the purple is Gigabyte it makes sense as i have never isntalled any windows matrix drivers or what ever, only the sata ones :) Think i will switch them over lol.
 
I never needed to install any drivers for my Intel ICH5R controller (think DS3 is ICH8R) when I just wanted to run one SATA hard drive but needed drivers for using RAID 1 - and installed the Maxtrix storage application to monitor the array better :)
 
Now you have lost me :D

Basically when i install windows i miss the F6 bit, and when im in windows i install the SATA drivers that come on the CD. But im useing the yellow ports which i didnt know untill now are Intel. I'll format, do the same, change mode to ACHI and plug into the purple ports? :|
 
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You installed the Sata "drivers" after installing windows? Are you sure its not Intels Application Accelerator/Matrix storage manager (which is an application, not a driver)?

I really have no idea what mode you will use as I dont have the same mobo as you, but the Purple connectors are seperate to the orange one. The purple ones use the Gigabyte controller. - Check your mobo manual and it will say what to use for what circumstances.



My mobo has an Intel Controller (ICH5R) and a Promise 378 RAID controller, each controller has its own settings - The intel controller does not require a driver for using in "SATA mode" but does for "RAID" mode.

The Promise controller requires a driver for both SATA and RAID mode. To make things even more confusing when I switch my promise controller to "RAID" mode it requires a different driver than the "SATA mode" driver.

I hope this hasn't confused you even more!

<edit>

Looking at your mobo manual online under "Intergrated Peripherals" in the bios, it says:

Onboard SATA/IDE Device
This function allows users to enable or disable the SATA/IDE ports controlled by the GIGABYTE
SATA2 controller.

OnBoard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode
This function allows users to decide the operating mode of the SATA ports controlled by the
GIGABYTE SATA2 controller.
IDE Set the SATA channel to IDE mode.(Default value)
AHCI Set the SATA channel to AHCI mode. Advanced Host Controller Interface
(AHCI) is an interface specification that allows the storage driver to
enable advanced Serial ATA features such as Native Command Queuing
and hot plug. For more details about AHCI, please visit Intel's
website.
RAID/IDE Set the SATA channel to RAID mode and IDE channel to IDE mode.

so for the first bit you need to have it "enabled", then the second bit I think you can have it in either IDE or AHCI depending if you want Native command queuing support. If one doesn't work try the other, if neither work you will need to download the driver from the gigabyte website. - which I think is this;

http://europe.giga-byte.com/FileList/Driver/motherboard_driver_sata_gb_sata2raid.exe

that one has all the windows versions on it, just put the appropriate one for you on a pen drive and point to the folder on the F6 install bit. - dont forget to run the .exe to extract the drivers to a folder, then find the appropriate driver to copy to your pen drive!
 
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Ah ok cool, Good luck - hopefully it will work without any problems! I am going to bed now, even though I dont have work tomorrow ;D
 
Well i switched to the purple, boot up now takes seconds, everything is more responsive.

1 little niggle, running the HDD benchmark and it wasnt 4mb/s - it went up to the same as the other drive. There both around 50/60mb/s. Is this still slow? and it did BSOD on the benchmark :P Hopefully it wasnt nothing to serious.
 
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