Dammit. IDE to AHCI. Someone needs to be shot

I'll shut up because I have no idea.......

Hmmm, I have a rather recent mobo/BIOS and a SSD housing my OS, so I'm going to have to look into this. 

Never assume.  Always look at your hardware documentation, motherboard bios and for manufacturer firmware updates or it's your fault.  

Great tip though!

Benefits of being a tinkerer. One of the first things I do is browse through every page of the BIOS.

I'm not familiar with half of the abbreviations you've used, but I share your sentiment and will look into it when I have a system that actually includes that stuff.

It's the same with manufacturers making mice that have side buttons that are positioned horizontally, instead of vertically, like anatomy intended. It can drive you nuts. 

Yeah - I agree.  I always read up before I build and then do the appropriate tweaks.  Pretty lame if you bought a custom pc and they didn't have someone sort through that.  I understand if you bought from dell or some such rot, but you'd think they'd tweak that if you bought a high end customized rig.  Anyway, better late than never, I suppose. 

I didn't assume anything.... the idea interested me so I was going to look into it for my rig.  I have since investigated and ascertained that I can in fact access the AHCI option with my mobo/BIOS, so no problemo. 

I'm currently awaiting confimation of a method to best enable the required BIOS edit without having to reformat Windows afterwards.  Once in possession of that advice I shall be making the necessary changes. 

Hopefully, I don't f**k it up and can report back with the result.  

Seconded!

Do you read topic before posting in it ???

Look at the topic : https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/411863

reply 9 : link to the microsoft Fix it 50470 ( official microsoft site )

reply 14-15 ( just before your reply 16 ) : guy have try it and it work

Yes!!!!!!!!   Also, you will notice that I post from Wincustomize, so I would not have seen your post over at Sins, or the fix you speak of... or that it worked for some guy.

What I read elsewhere, however, is that Windows has to be reformatted because it cannot install the AHCI drivers prior to the BIOS change and subsequent reboot.. that Windows cannot reboot without said drivers after the change.  However, the article also said there is a workaround.  I have been in contact with yrag with respect to this... though I may still have to rewrite Windows.  Despite the best advice of yrag, my machine BSOD's at boot in the AHCI mode, just as the Win flag is about to emerge.

Luckily, I did did this other research, otherwise I would have been stuck with an inoperable machine and no remedy.  You see, when the BIOS edit is made, booting back into the BIOS to revert to default settings is not that simple.  As I discovered, it's not just a matter of pressing the delete key and waiting for it to load as before.  No, it just sits on a page listing the installed drives, with no way out... other than a hard reset.  To boot into the BIOS the delete key must be pressed continuously from the moment the reset button is pressed, otherwise the opportunity is missed.

Anyway, I have now been to the Sins post linked to above, and I will try the advised fix.  Thank you.  Hopefully it's a 'one fix fits all' and I can avoid having to reformat.

It is a cross forum topic... opening post was from "Joeuser" forum and there is reply from Wincustomize, GalCiv II, Elemental, Stardock, sins of a solar empire and more forums...

Driver are already installed with Vista and Win7... but they are dissabled in the register key... the microsoft "fix it" simply modify 2 register keys

For a full explanation, go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

Thoumsin: enough already............

What is the problem, i simply try to help...

Well, from now, i will not make anymore post related to computing since it seem that you are the local expert...

I used your reported link to fix, installed the Microsoft Fixit update, enabled AHCI 2.0 and no errors, booted fine.  Thanks!

Best regards,
Steven.

The thing is, Thoumasin, it was not yrag's advice that was awry.  My issues may have been because I was dual booting between Vista & win 7.  When yrag was made aware of this he adjusted his advice accordingly, it's just that at 5. 20 in the morning and only 4 - 5 hours sleep in 2 days, I was just too weary to concentrate properly.

I'm going to have another go at it shortly... will report back once I'm done.

Sorry, that does not make any sense. IDE is an a harddrive-interface obsoletede by SATA, AHCI is a USB2-protocol. So you can perhaps speed-up USB harddrives by using the correct USB-protocol, but it would not influence the internal harddrives. In all the cases the BIOS-settings only affect boot-up speed, once the operating system is loaded it overrides almost all BIOS-settings anyway.

Carewolf...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface 

Okay, it's done.... AHCI using only yrag's method, no patches or files from MS.  The only difference to before, and getting BSOD's, is that I disabled the Vista drive and removed it from the MBR in msconfig.

Then all I had to do was go into Run> regedit> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci and change the start value in the right panel from 1 to zero: then I booted into BIOS> Peripherals> SATA Values> change from IDE to SATA... then rebooted to Windows, and voila.  Win 7 loaded the necessary drivers, prompted a reboot and here I am... in AHCI mode.

I think next up I'm going to replace my current WD SATA'2's with a couple of SATA3's.... may as well take advantage of the higher speeds now I have the mobo technology to support them.

*EDIT*

The above registry key is for an AMD based machine and will not be present in an Intel based machine.  The registry key for an Intel machine is as follows...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV.... then right click "Start" and change the value to 0> reboot to BIOS to change IDE to AHCI> reboot to Windows.  If in Vista or Win 7 the OS will load the necessary drivers and prompt another reboot.

Once performed you're all set to go... in AHCI.

While that in part is true, most manufacturers enable their SATA controllers in IDE mode by default.  The OP complains that IDE by default is ridiculous in this day and age of high speed devices

The purpose of the OP, is to inform people that faster transfer rates are possible by changing to AHCI.   While I have noticed an improvement in transfer rates [up to 20mb/s faster] I'm not going to see the fastest possible speeds until I replace my standard drives with the next generation devices.

USB has OHCI, EHCI, UHCI, and now xHCI, as Jafo mentioned that has nothing to do with AHCI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UHCI

Starkers. For the love of Jeff do not change your Sata II drives to Sata III's. Any performance increase from Sata III drives will be negligible. It's really just HDD manufacturers wanting to keep selling new drives. Mechanical drives have never been able to saturate a Sata II port, never mind a Sata III. The only way to get the most from Sata II and especially Sata III is with SSD's, or by RAIDing the drives. To my mind, the only benefit to Sata III drives is that it might have more onboard cache. They also use Advance Format so the sector size is 4KB as opposed to the 512bytes that Sata II use. If you're Sata II's work okay you may as well save your money.

Edit: Additionally, The WD Sata III 7200rpm drives don't seem to have AAM on them, so they run loud and there's bugger all you can do about it.

The touted performance increases I read about actually came with my mobo information and specs, rather than a HDD manufacturer....

Yet another onboard feature of GIGABYTE AMD 900 series motherboards are integrated the latest AMD SB950 chip for high-speed SATA Revision 3.0 compatibility, delivering 6 ports native superfast 6Gbps link speeds for twice the data transfer rates of SATA Revision 2.0 (3 Gbps) and RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 support. When used in RAID 0 (Stripe) mode, GIGABYTE AMD 900 series motherboards offer even faster data transfer rates of up to 4x the speed of current SATA interfaces."

So yeah, to take advantage of the higher speeds supported by my mobo, SATAII devices just don't cut the mustard.  However, I will take your thoughts into account and give it some more research before splashing out the bucks on them.

Thoumsin is RIGHT !  it  worked  for  me --Had  Computer Buildt with Intel Core i7 2600 3.4Ghz Proccessor with  2 Terra SataIII Hatachi Hardrive Corsair  Case  had Hotswap  for  drive on top. Did  not  work ! because  windows 7 was installed  in IDE mode I  did What Thoumsin suggested and it  worked . it is running in AHCI mode now

For a full explanation, go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

I page through as well. But AHCI is listed as a RAID type thing in bios and since I wasn't running a RAID I didn't think anything of keeping it in IDE mode until I recently learned just how important it is to switch to AHCI.

every P67 and Z68 chipset mobo i've used in new rigs, except for MSI boards, has had AHCI enabled by default. i still go into the BIOS to make sure it's enabled before i spin windows. it seems most AMD boards are in IDE mode by default. if a customer wants a pre-built rig, i try to convince them to buy a SysteMAX rig from TigerDirect. they are pretty good about having AHCI enabled. it isn't always but most times it is. plus, they usually use ASUS or Gigabyte boards in their rigs.