Native command queing question

Golden Ape · 22 Aug 2007 at 15:05

I'm guessing this question must have been asked before but for the life of me I can't find the answer anywhere. Basically I want to know if native command queing (NCQ) is currently working on my machine.

I have the following setup: Asus P5B mobo and Samsung HD501LJ both of which support NCQ. I've got the drive enalbed as AHCI in Bios and am running Vista 32 Buisiness. So how do I know if NCQ is actually working? I've looked around in Device Manager and can see no sign of it.

Just out of interest: I actually ended up having to reinstal Vista as I'd initially insalled with the drive in ATA mode and wanted to change to AHCI (required for NCQ). I'd followed a guide (that I can't now find) that suggested I should change a registry entry before enabling AHCI in bios. The up shot of all this was that Windows wouldn't start and wouldnt' repair. Ah well.

Golden Ape · 22 Aug 2007 at 15:22

Mmm interesting - thanks for the input rpstewart (I was hoping you'd be around). I've come across quite a range of opinions on whether or not it makes much of difference. Does AHCI bring any benefit over just running a drive in ATA mode? I think I'm right in saying it allows hotplugging which might be handy for eSATA drives.

Golden Ape · 22 Aug 2007 at 16:14

Right I guess I might have been better off just leaving the drive in legacy mode - that will teach me to messy around with a stable system. Still it seems quite anoying not to be able to tell whetehr or not the much vaunted NCQ is actually active (let alone providing any advantage!)

Golden Ape · 24 Aug 2007 at 12:37

Ah thanks. I haven't given up quite yet! I'm not quite clear what you mean by Intel HHD management tools though. Do you mean device manager > hard disk?

edit: Right I see what you mean by the Application Accelerator. Doesn't appear that there's a version for Vista though. Hmmm may be I should give up on this, it's already cost me one reinstall.