DS3P Sata question

Tk7 · 22 Apr 2007 at 20:02

Hi,
I hope someone can help answer my questions. I have recently built a system, which is running fine. I am using a Gigabyte DS3P motherboard with a WD Sata HDD.

I have noticed in the bios there are a couple of settings relating to IDE/AHCI mode etc

The two settings i'd like some help with are in the Integrated peripherals section.

SATA RAID / AHCI Mode is disabled by default &
Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode is set to IDE by default

Obviously, the system is running fine, but am I losing any performance by having the settings this way? I haven't tried changing them yet, but i'd be grateful if someone could clarify this for me, the manual just gives descriptions of the various settings, and doesn't really state the benefits.

Thanks
Tk7

Cob · 22 Apr 2007 at 20:10

Nah you're not really losing any benefits.

AHCI gives you NCQ and a couple of other things, but nothing to shout about. You need to have it enabled and load the SATA drivers from disk when installing Windows to use it. You can't just switch it on for a current installation.

And the SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode is for RAID. If you're not running RAIDed disks then leave it at IDE.

Tk7 · 22 Apr 2007 at 20:15

Thanks for the quick reply Cob!
That figures I guess, my system is running as well as i'd hoped, they were just bugging me. And if something as simple as that was affecting it I guess it's best to check.

Thanks again,

Cheers
Tk7

ethan · 22 Apr 2007 at 20:50

Mine is the same except when I switch to ahci mode the sreen fades on a reboot and then continually reboots? I loaded the drivers using f6 on a new windows install.

DoomWolf · 23 Apr 2007 at 14:54

In fact you can change it on an existing Windows installation (I did last week).

Unplug all your drives and plug the system drive into one of the purple (Gigabyte) SATA ports.

Go into the BIOS and set the top two options (those relating to the Intel SATA ports) to AHCI and native mode (I can't remember the exact names for the options as I'm at work).

Then reboot and Windows should boot because the Gigabyte SATA ports to which the drive is connected are still set to IDE mode.

Once in Windows, install the Intel Matrix Storage drivers.

Then shut down and reattach your drives to the yellow Intel SATA ports as before.

Boot up and have a look in the Intel SATA drive manager program that is installed by the Matrix drivers.

IAmATeaf · 23 Apr 2007 at 17:13

DoomWolf said:
In fact you can change it on an existing Windows installation (I did last week).

Unplug all your drives and plug the system drive into one of the purple (Gigabyte) SATA ports.

Go into the BIOS and set the top two options (those relating to the Intel SATA ports) to AHCI and native mode (I can't remember the exact names for the options as I'm at work).

Then reboot and Windows should boot because the Gigabyte SATA ports to which the drive is connected are still set to IDE mode.

Once in Windows, install the Intel Matrix Storage drivers.

Then shut down and reattach your drives to the yellow Intel SATA ports as before.

Boot up and have a look in the Intel SATA drive manager program that is installed by the Matrix drivers.

I posted the exact same in a thread that ethan created as that's exactly what I did as my rig didn't have a floppy disk but some weird reason he's having problems with it.