Hard drive IDE -> AHCI

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

We i have a 320 sata II in my pc and a 80 gb sata1.

They were installed when i had no knowledge of the "ahci' option there fore it was installed under "ide"

Now i have a problem with my 320 (but it still has data on it ) so i want to convert the 80 gb to my boot drive. Is it possible to do this without losing any data (the 80 already has windows x64 installed, under "ide" mode)?

 

[FR@NK]

The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is a hardware mechanism that allows software to communicate with Serial ATA (SATA) devices (such as host bus adapters) that are designed to offer features not offered by Parallel ATA (PATA) controllers, such as hot-plugging and native command queuing. The specification details a system memory structure for computer hardware vendors in order to transfer data between system memory and the device.

AHCI doesnt effect any data on the drive, only how the OS and the SATA controller function together.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

so it will be as simple as a driver and a repair?

 

[Kursah]

I've done it for both XP and Vista...just Google IDE to ACHI in whatever OS you have...I don't remember specifics, I do remember after going ACHI I had issues with my SATA DVD drive for some reason, so I went back. Plus I noticed NO performance or stability improvements over what I had already.

Hope that helps!

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

no performance or stability advantages?

 

[CrackerJack]

This might help some:
http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=106575.0

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

thank you lots ({)

 

[Mussels]

i've done this and know what happens.

enabling AHCI gives you advanced options such as NCQ and hot-swap when using sata II hard drives. a repair is not neccesary, i used that very guide on the MSI forums that CrackerJack linked to - it worked perfectly and got my shiny extra features working just wonderfully (i have e-sata adaptors hooked upto the onboard sata ports, and hotswap did not work without AHCI mode)

 

[CrackerJack]

Here some more info on SATA->AHCI

SATA AHCI Mode

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

so i set my thing to ahci no boot disk present
set it to raid .. as winxp logo comes up pc restarts

set it back to ide .. everything is fine ...

 

[CrackerJack]

so i set my thing to ahci no boot disk present
set it to raid .. as winxp logo comes up pc restarts

set it back to ide .. everything is fine ...

did you reinstall windows?

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

no

 

[niko084]

It's pretty simple but an annoying round about.. Glad to see you got it working

 

[CrackerJack]

the link i gave you before is just one way. But the best way is to reinstall windows, be sure to have the AHCI driver first. I did some testing early but didn't get a chance to take some screenshots. But I had no performance increase when switch from Leg IDE to SATA->AHCI. Testing with HDTach. Both had the same results.

 

[niko084]

the link i gave you before is just one way. But the best way is to reinstall windows, be sure to have the AHCI driver first. I did some testing early but didn't get a chance to take some screenshots. But I had no performance increase when switch from Leg IDE to SATA->AHCI. Testing with HDTach. Both had the same results.

You wont see anything there, where you see a difference is if you are moving 2 folders off drive a, one to drive b and another to drive c, something like that, then you will get around 10% or so.

 

[CrackerJack]

You wont see anything there, where you see a difference is if you are moving 2 folders off drive a, one to drive b and another to drive c, something like that, then you will get around 10% or so.

still didn't see an increase in that either I rather have RAID between the two.

 

[Kursah]

no performance or stability advantages?

There are touted benefits like earlier stated, but I don't hotswap SATA drives, I only have one large drive and that's more than enough for everything I have yet. I noticed no feel in performance by "seat of the pants", regular system use, or in benchmarks. NCQ sounds like a good feature for multitasking, but in reality HDD technology right now is quicker than ever but is no match for system bus/RAM speed...I'm sure when SSD's are more mainstream and improved that may be the way to go.

I had the same interest as many in trying ACHI in XP and Vista...I never re-installed, and never had a floppy so adding the achi file (iirc) was how I've done it. I can only state my experiences with it...like I said I did noticed that I could no longer boot from my CD/DVD drive(s) in ACHI mode for some reason (both P5B Deluxe and DFI P35 LP) on my SATA DVD drive...my IDE drive was never affected of course.

But it's easy to do the swap to ACHI and if you want it w/o having to re-install your copy of Windows, it's definately not a challenge, but afterwards I was wondering why I even tried it...I guess I was expecting a change that may be there but wasn't noticable. ACHI still has it's benefits, and is definately not BAD technology, just for my uses I found no sense in using it.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

thanks .... btw what should the rig in my specs witha hd3870 do @ 3dmark06?

 

[Kursah]

thanks .... btw what should the rig in my specs witha hd3870 do @ 3dmark06?

hmm dunno...there's an estimator out there, a few guys on here use it. I don't worry too much about the scores in benches...I go more for gaming performance which can differ from 3DMark performance in some situations. But I'd say you should be good for 10K+ in my estimation...which is not guarenteed to be even remotely accurate.

If you really wanna run benches, run game benches, Crysis Demo, World In Conflict Demo, Devil May Cry 4 Demo, etc, there are quite a few out there, which is pretty cool imo.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

got 11.2K