AHCI Question

Relentless81 · 27 Feb 2013 at 20:53

Hi,

I'm installing an SSD drive for the first time tomorrow and just looked at my BIOS to see what needs setting up

SATA 3 is already enabled but which of the three SATA's do I change to AHCI, is it all three or just the "Onchip" Currently everything is set to IDE

Options are:

Onchip SATA Type
Onboard ESATA (Assume this is external)
Onboard GSATA

Also what happens if I'm still running mechanical drives as storage drives?

Thanks

wazza300 · 27 Feb 2013 at 21:31

t might be onchip,the storage drives should be fine in ahci mode

Relentless81 · 28 Feb 2013 at 08:42

Ok in that case I'll just change them all to AHCI and see what happens, thinking about it, it cant do any harm if the storage drives run fine in AHCI

Ace Modder · 28 Feb 2013 at 10:02

Run it in AHCI mode, only your boot drive gets affected between modes anyway. Your mechanical drives which you will not be booting off with still work fine.

AHCI is best for SSD boot drives. It allows for the full SATA3 usage/feature set.

You need to set AHCI before you install Windows though, as it may not boot otherwise. You cannot generally change modes after an OS installation, as it wont boot.

bledd · 28 Feb 2013 at 10:16

Yup

Just whack them all over to AHCI

Use the Intel ports for your SSD drive, the additional ports won't be as fast. If you say which motherboard you have, someone may be able to tell you which ones they are.

As always, unplug all the other drives whilst installing Windows, to prevent any silly problems with boot records being on the wrong drives etc.

Relentless81 · 28 Feb 2013 at 17:01

Thanks for the advice, its arrived from you guys today so I'm about to put the advice to good use and get it installed

Cheers

Grimbough · 28 Feb 2013 at 17:24

Ace Modder said:
You need to set AHCI before you install Windows though, as it may not boot otherwise. You cannot generally change modes after an OS installation, as it wont boot.

Whilst it's true that it almost certainly wont boot if you make the change after you've installed, it's not that hard to fix.

I ended up in exactly that situation because I couldn't install the OS without being in IDE mode. Using the handy "Let Micrsoft fix this" button from here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976) worked a charm, letting me change to AHCI and boot no problem.

Relentless81 · 28 Feb 2013 at 20:23

Up and running spent of the time cleaning and re-wiring everything

Just starting the Windows install from scratch, cant beleive how quick it is already :eek:

Thanks again for the advice

:cool:

decto · 28 Feb 2013 at 22:37

Ace Modder said:
Run it in AHCI mode, only your boot drive gets affected between modes anyway. Your mechanical drives which you will not be booting off with still work fine.

AHCI is best for SSD boot drives. It allows for the full SATA3 usage/feature set.

You need to set AHCI before you install Windows though, as it may not boot otherwise. You cannot generally change modes after an OS installation, as it wont boot.

If you google there is a registry value change to allow the machine to boot in ACHI.

I've used this on a couple of installs to switch into ACHI on both win8 and Win 7. Both have been running for a few months now with no issues.

Ideally it's best to do it before install but you can easily change over.

AD