Hard Drive mode in Bios for Win 7 Install

skeletonw00t

skeletonw00t

skeletonw00t

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Joined
8 Jan 2007
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221
Hi all,

In my BIOS I have 2 settings for sata hard drives: AHCI and IDE Legacy mode.

If I remember correctly when I installed Windows XP I had to use IDE Legacy mode due to the sata drive not showing up properly in the install?

Do I need to do this in Windows 7 or can I change it back?

Also I am installing to a fresh HDD but if I change the setting and then put my old HDD back in as a Data drive - will the drive be recognised? Also all my partitions on the old drive were lost somehow by the XP installation - could this setting be why the windows 7 install is not showing them?
 
skeletonw00t said:
Hi all,

In my BIOS I have 2 settings for sata hard drives: AHCI and IDE Legacy mode.

If I remember correctly when I installed Windows XP I had to use IDE Legacy mode due to the sata drive not showing up properly in the install?

Do I need to do this in Windows 7 or can I change it back?

Also I am installing to a fresh HDD but if I change the setting and then put my old HDD back in as a Data drive - will the drive be recognised? Also all my partitions on the old drive were lost somehow by the XP installation - could this setting be why the windows 7 install is not showing them?
Click to expand...

Why don't you experiment? Maybe, there's a updated BIOS firmware for your motherboard which resolves such bugs, did you check?
 
These are not bugs like the other guy suggested, it's nothing to do with bios updates. Windows xp never has sata drivers pre installed so you had to load the sata driver yourself via a floppy. Windows vista and 7 has sata drivers installed. So go ahead and select ahci mode and then do your install. It will pick up the drives no problem.

if you put the old hdd back in... and change it back to ide mode then yes it will be recognised. But you will need to do another install of windows obviously.

You could install xp in ahci mode, you just needed to pre load the sata drivers.
 
Win 7 will install absolutely fine with HDD is AHCI mode, even if you install it in IDE mode there is a simple registry change you can do before you reboot and set bios to AHCI.

Putting your old HDD back in with the bios set to ACHI mode should be fine as its the windows driver that will let you read the disk.

Win XP can be installed in AHCI mode but you will need manufacturers SATA driver...
 
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