My new SSD - IDE works, AHCI doesn't

[Merlin5]

I've installed a new Samsung 830 which is blisteringly fast, 10 secs from windows to desk, however there's a problem in AHCI mode.

So, SSD worked fine (as the only sata device connected) in AHCI mode, but when I connected either my DVD or HDD to a sata port, the SSD took a very long time, well over a minute. The only way I've overcome this is changing back to native IDE in bios and not having AHCI. Is there a way to fix it so I can use AHCI? I believe in IDE mode, I can't now use a particular intel rapid storage file a friend told me to install that would have improved speed again.

Tried ''Onchip SATA Port 4/5 Type 'as 'As SATA Type', connected SSD to port 4 and also tried port 5, worked fine in both until other devices were connected. Then changed it to IDE as in my screenshot, still no difference. So I changed the one above 'Onchip SATA Type' from 'AHCI' to native 'IDE' and it all works with all devices connected, and all very fast. But it should work in AHCI, right? I believe there's no noticeable performance difference from IDE to AHCI other than hotplugging, so this may not be that important anyway?

 

[Merlin5]

Thanks for the replies guys, sorry I haven't replied sooner, been very busy, including having windows installed. No really, double glazed ones, not Microsoft. I'll try out the cmos reset and maybe update bios.

tbh

ahci mode should work though,@ the op what data does the hdd have on it? old os or just storage stuff??

Well at the moment, it's a new SSD and a brand new caviar black HDD, so nothing on them except new OS install on SSD. My RE3 HDD with all my important data, media and previous OS installation is out of the pc now and awaiting me to put it in my new usb enclosure.

 

[Merlin5]

I've had a similar problem recently with my M4. It was taking ages to boot and even accessing the DVD drive. This was after a factory reset of the drive & rebuild, using Asus drivers.

I have found that these Chipset drivers worked a treat. Now boots in 20 seconds.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx#1

Wow, you are right!

I hadn't installed my chipset drivers yet but just installed the ones from your link. Changed back to AHCI and now get a fast boot. There's a 2 second difference between AHCI and IDE. Both go from 'Starting Windows' logo to desk in about 10 seconds. But using Restart-Time.vbs to monitor the exact boot times by rebooting my PC, I get these results, consistently.

IDE mode gets 'Your computer restarts in 27 seconds'.
AHCI mode gets: 'Your computer restarts in 29 seconds'.

Of course there's nothing much in it and I think the marginally slower AHCI time from restart to desk is due to this screen that isn't there in IDE mode


Am I best leaving it in AHCI, or gaining 2 seconds and going back to IDE? Do I need to reinstall windows having switched back and forth between AHCI and IDE? And finally, what about my motherboard specific chipset drivers which I downloaded the other day from Gigabyte, do I not need to install them now? It's a bigger file than the one I just installed. It's the middle one of these, and the top one highlighted is the one I just installed.

 

[Merlin5]

Glad your sorted

If its working with these drivers I would leave it as is it personally.

You don't really need to reinstall, because it just registry change to AHCI..

It's amazing how after after installing just a few drivers and half a dozen programs after my fresh OS install, the reboot time has already slowed down. Not too much but now it's 36 to 38 seconds from pressing restart to getting to the desktop. I hope it doesn't get slower, and I haven't even started any windows updates yet. I'm wondering what tweaks I can make in BIOS to reduce the POST time further? Maybe I should do a BIOS update as suggested earlier. I read on another forum where someone said a new BIOS dropped him from 34 secs to 18.

Do these benchmarks look as they should be for the SSD? It's a sata 3 drive and my motherboard is sata 2 so I know I'm not getting the best out of it, but I still was expecting HD tune to show better numbers, like 0.1 access time, a higher maximum and average transfer rate around 200+ MB/s and higher burst rate. Is it lower because of my motherboard and/or because of my cpu? Friend of mine has the OCZ Vertex 2 sata 2 drive on a sata 3 motherboard and he's getting much better HD Tune and ATTO results than mine. Given that neither of us are getting sata 3 performance, shouldn't the Samsung 830 at least match his results?

 

[Merlin5]

Hi Phil, thanks for all your help so far! Slight correction, the erase first said it estimated 6 minutes, then as it started erasing it then said it would take 32 minutes, but it actually completed in 7 minutes. But still, as you say, it does still seem slow compared to erases you've done before.

 

[Merlin5]

its normal for startup times to slow a little as windows fills up with programs ect,a fresh clean install usually takes around 8-12 seconds to desktop,with additional programs/services it takes around 20-25 seconds which is perfectly normal

different manufacturers of motherboards vary in post times from pressing the button to the bios post screen then into windows,updated bios's may speed the time up

did you test with samsungs own magician software's secure erase? maybe that would be better suited?

No I haven't even opened the envelope containing the Samsung software disk .
Is it worth me erasing the disk again using the Samsung magician's eraser and reinstalling windows to see if it would make a difference? I wouldn't mind doing it as I haven't gotten too far beyond the basic OS install.

 

[Merlin5]

Well I'm around tomorrow and maybe I can erase the disc with samsung software and reinstall windows. Question really though is, are those ATTO and HD Tune stats I posted above lower than they should be, or, as they should be given my sig rig? I'm also going to do a BIOS update. I'm going to use my pendrive and convert it from NTFS to Fat32, which is what it needs according to the Gigabyte Q-Flash page.

http://uk.gigabyte.com/webpage/20/images/utility_qflash.pdf

Is that the safest way to flash my BIOS?

 

[Merlin5]

Yeah that's right for BIOS flash,figures look right in atto for sata2

Cool, thanks. I still feel that the HD Tune numbers are perhaps on the low side though. I'm hoping to try and get transfer rates to be in the 200's and access time to .1ms. But I guess I'll know for sure after a BIOS update, new erase, and new windows install. My third windows install since getting this SSD! Maybe third time lucky

 

[Merlin5]

Thanks phil, I'll download AS SSD later and check for alignment. I'm off out now, I'll check this thread on my phone.

this is an old screenshot i have of a crucial m4 i once owned,it shows sata2 speeds and sata3 speeds but on an intel board,amd boards/sata ports are slightly slower but not by much

At 0.5 my read and write figures are only over 6000 and 7000. Isn't that too low if yours at 0.5 are all over 24000? I don't know what the numbers mean though, if higher is better?

 

[Merlin5]

Well, I flashed to my board's newest BIOS and it's made a big difference!
AHCI reboot time now 28 seconds (knocked 8 to 10 seconds off), and now, IDE is actually slower at 34 seconds. Big improvement in HD Tune and I now have my 200+ MB/s transfer rates and .1ms access time. ATTO showing bigger numbers in each transfer size, and AS SSD showing alignment is ok. Not sure why it's still in german when I'd enabled english. I'm much happier now. Is that a decent AS SSD score?

http://i50.tinypic.com/25i86iw.jpg

** Please resize image to no more than 1280px wide before replacing image tags - thanks **

 

[Merlin5]

Can you guys check if I've got my SSD in the correct SATA port, as it's a bit confusing in BIOS.

My motherboard has six SATA ports labelled 0,1,2,3,4,5.

In BIOS, I set it to AHCI before installing the OS, and I set 'OnChip SATA Port 4/5' to 'As SATA Type', and the description of that is "Set SATA Port 4/5 mode as SATA Port 0-3".

In the Samsung manual it suggests having the SSD in the lowest numbered port. I'm assuming that would give the best performance.

Because of the 'OnChip SATA Port 4/5' to 'As SATA Type', I put my 830 in the port actually labelled on the motherboard as port 4. So do I assume that is now port 0, i.e, I'm already in the lowest numbered port as per the 4/5 SATA type setting? But then, if ports 4 and 5 (two actual ports) are simulating ports 0 to 3 (four ports), how can it do that? Or am I completely misunderstanding what it means.

The SSD doesn't work in my physically labelled 0 to 3 ports (it says disk failure in those), and only works in ports 4 and 5. So I have my DVD and 1TB Caviar Black in the physically labelled ports 0 and 1. Is that how it should be? As the PC boots, it shows this order for a couple of seconds:

0000 1TB HDD,
0001 Optiarc DVD
0002 Samsung 830 SSD.

It's like I can't get the SSD to be first in the order, and my OS is installed to the 830. But it does show priority to the samsung as the first hard disk when in BIOS, so maybe it's ok?

 

[Merlin5]

Update: I disconnected my 1TB HDD tonight but left the SSD connected and I got a disk failure message during boot. It seems windows somehow installed a 100mb system reserved partition to my 1TB HDD instead of the SSD, and that my HDD starts the boot process and then the SSD takes over. That would account for the SSD not working in the other sata ports, because I'd also disconnected the HDD last night which was needed for starting the bootup. That means I have to start all over, erasing everything, reinstalling windows, windows updates and SP1 again, etc.

I'm going to delete the HDD partition then disconnect the HDD before installing windows to the SSD again. I'm guessing the SSD should work in port 0 then.

 

[Merlin5]

No your fine,keep all disks connected and set dvd drive as first boot device then pop in windows disk and do a startup repair,might need to do it twice,once done set ssd/os as first boot device and that's it

Ah, nice. That start up repair, what does it do, does it remove the system reserved partition from the HDD and put it on the SSD then? In my BIOS btw, there's no option for setting SSD as first boot device, only says HDD. In hard disk priority though, it shows my SSD and HDD.

 

[Merlin5]

Yh set it at the top in hdd priority,it doesnt remove the partition it just sorts out the boot record and should hide the partition if its working/booting correctly

Thanks for the info wazza. Just for my own clarification then, will this repair allow the SSD and HDD to operate just as efficiently as if I'd erased everything and started over? And it means the SSD will then boot without the need for the HDD to be connected (if I wanted to remove it for example) to start the boot process as it's doing now?

edit: I've got instructions now how to remove the system reserve partition, then unplug my HDD, then write a new boot loader, and then do start up repair up to 3 times. I'll see how it goes!

 

[Merlin5]

Well I just like to see how fast it is from reboot to desk, but from windows startup to desk it's about 12 or 13 secs.

I successfully deleted the reserve partition. Only needed to do start up repair once. SSD is now booting on it's own. Here's the instructions I followed and also pics I took of the process for anyone interested.

Remove system reserve partition:

Boot from your installation or repair disc.
When you get to the language screen, press Shift+F10.
Type diskpart, Enter
Type list disk, Enter after diskpart is loaded
Type select disk X (where X is your drive with the System reserve partition on it), Enter
Type list partition, Enter
Type select partition X (where X is your System reserve partition), Enter
Type delete partition override, Enter
Type list disk, Enter
Type select disk X (where X is your OS drive), Enter
Type list partition, Enter
Type select partition X (where X is your OS partition), Enter
Type active, Enter
Close the command prompt

We have deleted the partition, and Windows will be unable to boot at this point. Now it is time to write a new boot loader and BCD to the Windows partition.
Now shut down, unplug any secondary drives, boot up and run start up repair up to 3 times.
If startup repair does not work follow this: (link)
In CMD type:
bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup, Enter
c:, Enter
cd boot, Enter
attrib bcd -s -h -r, Enter
ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old, Enter
bootrec /RebuildBcd, Enter


http://i.imgur.com/oqGyF.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3y0FH.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/JTqce.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wehyR.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/oMU7j.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/EUu44.jpg