Widescreen Gaming Forum

In the BIOS, my SATA hard drive is configured as IDE (default setting). The other two options are RAID & AHCI. I heard that using the AHCI option can increase the hard drive's performance. My mobo is Asus P5K Pro (P35/ICH9R chipset). Current OS is Win7 x64.

My questions regarding AHCI:
1. Do I need to do a fresh install of Windows after changing to AHCI?
2. Do I need to install additional drivers/software from Intel to use AHCI, e.g Intel Rapid Storage Technology or Intel Matrix Storage, after doing a fresh OS installation?
3. Will changing from IDE to AHCI have an affect on or cause issues to my DVD drive, which uses IDE?

Okay I'm no expert but I had to do some research about this in my time, so here's what I gathered.

1. No you don't !

-In regedit, navigate to: HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetservicesmsahci
Change Start value to 0.

-Reboot, enter BIOS, enable AHCI, and you're done.
Tested and approved by myself on two very different PCs :)

2. Nope, chipset drivers should take care of everything... :?:
3. You mean with a SATA DVD drive ? I... dunno :oops:

My DVD drive is IDE. There's no option in the BIOS to configure IDE devices. Maybe the IDE & SATA are on the same chip. There was one user who reported that his IDE DVD drive couldn't be detected by Windows after changing to AHCI, but managed to fix through the BIOS.

Your DVD drive should continue to work just fine.
I have a pair of IDE drives not sata, all my controllers are set to AHCI mode, yet the DVD drives remain in IDE mode as AHCI is only compatible with SATA devices.

IDE was superseded by SATA as it introduced a lot of advantages. AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) is an application programming interface that defines one mode of operation for SATA. AHCI does not affect the speed at which SATA drives operate but it exposes the advanced features that are available with SATA.

http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-ahci-and-ide/

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

Is the registry the same in 64-bit Windows 7?

Is the registry the same in 64-bit Windows 7?

Yes it is.

HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetservicesmsahci

Emoz93 fyi, HKLM means HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

I was able to find this setting on my Win7 x64 machine using the above path.

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

Good news: My DVD drive still works, in AHCI mode!


Bad news: Hopefully my lil' bro and I won't be dumb enough to accidentally eject the HDD instead of the USB drive.

Just set that icon to never show in the system tray.

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EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 3.5GB | 3 X LG Flatron 24EA53VQ in Nvidia Surround | Optoma HD20

Windows should just tell you that the drive is in use and impossible to eject even if you did click on it.