SATA disks in native Intel AHCI mode
Tuesday, 14. October 2008, 09:57:17
I've been going nuts after my SATA drives were constantly using damn PIO Mode 4 (we all hated PIO modes back in days of IDE drives) and Multi-Word Mode 2 despite having AHCI mode enabled in BIOS and all storage devices connected to Intel SATA ports on my ASUS P5Q Deluxe board. I almost decided to give up when Intel Matrix Storage poped up in my head. Went to Intel site, downloaded Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IATA85ENU.exe), installed it and rebooted. On next system boot there was a surprise waiting for me.
All storage devices were re-detected and all IDE Device or ATA Device entries in Device Manager were gone!
Only Intel ICH10R SATA AHCI Controller is there. Also all my SATA devices (2 HDD's and 1 optical drive) don't have "ATA" appended to their name anymore. Based on this, i can now assume it's actually running in native AHCI mode and not some emulated IDE/ATA crap.
SATA devices in native AHCI mode
To fix this issue we need:
- Intel chipset with appended letter "R" (like ICH10R)
- Native AHCI mode enabled in BIOS
- SATA disk drives (HDD's) and/or SATA optical devices (DVD-RW/BluRay)
- Intel Chipset Software installed (see links below)
- Intel Matrix Storage Manager installed (see links below)
DOWNLOADS:
Intel Chipset Software Utility
Intel Matrix Storage Manager
Note: Some Windows versions do not yeld any results in above links, for example selecting Windows Vista, 64-bit version that will not return any results. Just select "generic" Windows Vista* 64 instead.
Try the same for other versions, if it says there isn't any results for that selection.
I hope this will help to those with similar "problem". I was searching around, bunch of similar questions on different forums, but not a single one was ever answered.
Solution is a bit limited to Intel platform and Windows Vista, but at least you know where to start now
All storage devices were re-detected and all IDE Device or ATA Device entries in Device Manager were gone!
Only Intel ICH10R SATA AHCI Controller is there. Also all my SATA devices (2 HDD's and 1 optical drive) don't have "ATA" appended to their name anymore. Based on this, i can now assume it's actually running in native AHCI mode and not some emulated IDE/ATA crap.
SATA devices in native AHCI modeTo fix this issue we need:
- Intel chipset with appended letter "R" (like ICH10R)
- Native AHCI mode enabled in BIOS
- SATA disk drives (HDD's) and/or SATA optical devices (DVD-RW/BluRay)
- Intel Chipset Software installed (see links below)
- Intel Matrix Storage Manager installed (see links below)
DOWNLOADS:
Intel Chipset Software Utility
Intel Matrix Storage Manager
Note: Some Windows versions do not yeld any results in above links, for example selecting Windows Vista, 64-bit version that will not return any results. Just select "generic" Windows Vista* 64 instead.
Try the same for other versions, if it says there isn't any results for that selection.
I hope this will help to those with similar "problem". I was searching around, bunch of similar questions on different forums, but not a single one was ever answered.
Solution is a bit limited to Intel platform and Windows Vista, but at least you know where to start now
WIDGETIZE
Anonymous # 17. December 2008, 19:43
Hi,
Ive been having a similar issue. Thanx for the info! Another question, what are the SATA drivers for on the Installation CD?? Whenever i try to install them, i cannot load up windows. So i have to use the built in Vista drivers...... There seems to be alot of confusion regarding SATA drives going around.....
So will i see better performance if i follow this method?
rejzor # 18. December 2008, 07:44
Plus it looks better in Device Manager.
Oh and if your disk and chipset supports it, you'll also enable NCQ feature when using AHCI.
Anonymous # 18. December 2008, 16:32
Thanx... set it up last night... I'm understanding these issues better now : )