Linux and AHCI

almichev · 10 Aug 2008 at 09:46

Have been trying different distros again - Mandriva and Ubuntu. Neither of them would detect my hard drives unless AHCI was enabled. This of course messes up XP. In fact when I disabled AHCI I couldn't open XP and had to re-install. Am now back with Pardus 2008, this is the only distro that installs with AHCI disabled.

What are the advantages to AHCI? And does anyone know why it needs to be enabled for other distros to be installed on HDDs?

Am just curious, as I think I'll stick with Pardus for now - seems less hassle.

pingwing · 10 Aug 2008 at 17:07

AHCI allows all the advanced sata stuff (native command queing for example) and basically is the shiz! (iv just rebuild my pc and done a windows install with ahci enabled and its so much better).

I can only guess that some distros are having problems with emulated ide (which is what happens when you turn off ahci, though this didnt happen with gentoo :s (i recommend setting up windows to use ahci though you need to google it for xp i think)

almichev · 10 Aug 2008 at 23:27

Thanks pingwing. Is your new system faster with ahci?

pingwing · 11 Aug 2008 at 01:34

Short answer a lot!

Slightly longer one, yes but more so with loading off it and doing writes/copys on the discs (for example moving 18gig of music off my old hard drive to my new one took about 10 mins which left me a little speachless/annoyed as i wanted an excuse not to be playing games...)

It also helps if your trying to do more than one thing at once (for example loading something and changing song, as the hard drive is able to chose the closes thing to where it is on the disc opposed to completing the requests in order they were issued)

I personally think that overall its better to kick windows into useing it opposed to accomodating xp by not (as the performance is pretty nice)

thegoonden · 11 Aug 2008 at 07:45

Another example of Windows superior hardware support then.

ROFLMAO.

almichev · 11 Aug 2008 at 09:45

Cool! Sounds like it'll be worth a go. Research time. Tnx bud.

Septh · 11 Aug 2008 at 20:12

Newest ubuntu supports AHCI out the box.....

almichev · 11 Aug 2008 at 22:07

Most distros do, it's XP that's the problem.

Typical scummer, getting the wrong end of the stick

Play up Pompey........

Caged · 11 Aug 2008 at 22:17

If you've installed Windows with AHCI disabled then it's relatively easy to move to AHCI enabled - just install the AHCI drivers, reboot into the BIOS, enable AHCI and watch Windows come back up.

Septh · 12 Aug 2008 at 13:26

almichev said:
Most distros do, it's XP that's the problem.

Typical scummer, getting the wrong end of the stick

Play up Pompey........

Pompey scum!

Caged said:
If you've installed Windows with AHCI disabled then it's relatively easy to move to AHCI enabled - just install the AHCI drivers, reboot into the BIOS, enable AHCI and watch Windows come back up.

This is what I had to do, vista supported it out the box though :-)

Diss · 14 Aug 2008 at 19:23

i have Ubuntu up and running with BIOS AHCI enabled - worked like a charm

but my dual boot Vista just hung on the last stage of the install - and hangs at boot
if i reboot from the install CD and choose repair so i can load drivers - what do i need to load? (i am assuming this is the problem)

or is there any way i can fix it by accessing it from my linux partition?

thanks

Diss