Question on SATA ... IDE emulation mode vs. AHCI mode

Ok, I have a Gigabyte GA-ex58-UDR3 motherboard, but actually I think
that this question is pretty generic and would apply to almost any
modern motherboard.

I have a SATA hard drive, connected to a SATA port of the Intel ICH10R
chipset [actually, I have two SATA hard drives, and two SATA optical
drives]. The motherboard has a "Gigabyte" IDE/SATA controller on it to
provide an IDE port (and additional SATA ports) but since I have no ide
devices, that device is disabled entirely in the BIOS.

Here is the question: The BIOS has two settings for the modes of the
SATA ports (in the Intel ICH10R):

SATA RAID/AHCI Mode (choices are Disabled/Raid/AHCI; set to disabled)
SATA Port 0-3 Native Mode (choice are native/legacy, set to native)

And the system works fine. But it's using "IDE Emulation" to access the
hard drive.

So I set the SATA RAID/AHIC Mode to AHCI .... and the system won't boot.
It crashes during bootup, which causes a loop of continuous resets.

FWIW, I was pretty sure (certain, really) that when I installed this
system (Windows XP SP3, by the way), I used an F6 floppy driver to setup
the system.

So the question: I'd really like the SATA ports operating in AHCI mode.
How do I get there WITHOUT doing a total reinstall of Windows? I
thought I had the necessary SATA driver installed (via the F6 driver I
installed when I first configured the system), but apparently not. So,
again: What do I do to convert the system from accessing the SATA hard
drives via IDE emulation to accessing then in native SATA AHCI mode,
again, without having to reinstall Windows.

???

Barry Watzman wrote:
Ok, I have a Gigabyte GA-ex58-UDR3 motherboard, but actually I think
that this question is pretty generic and would apply to almost any
modern motherboard.

I have a SATA hard drive, connected to a SATA port of the Intel ICH10R
chipset [actually, I have two SATA hard drives, and two SATA optical
drives]. The motherboard has a "Gigabyte" IDE/SATA controller on it to
provide an IDE port (and additional SATA ports) but since I have no ide
devices, that device is disabled entirely in the BIOS.

Here is the question: The BIOS has two settings for the modes of the
SATA ports (in the Intel ICH10R):

SATA RAID/AHCI Mode (choices are Disabled/Raid/AHCI; set to disabled)
SATA Port 0-3 Native Mode (choice are native/legacy, set to native)

And the system works fine. But it's using "IDE Emulation" to access the
hard drive.

So I set the SATA RAID/AHIC Mode to AHCI .... and the system won't boot.
It crashes during bootup, which causes a loop of continuous resets.

FWIW, I was pretty sure (certain, really) that when I installed this
system (Windows XP SP3, by the way), I used an F6 floppy driver to setup
the system.

So the question: I'd really like the SATA ports operating in AHCI mode.
How do I get there WITHOUT doing a total reinstall of Windows? I
thought I had the necessary SATA driver installed (via the F6 driver I
installed when I first configured the system), but apparently not. So,
again: What do I do to convert the system from accessing the SATA hard
drives via IDE emulation to accessing then in native SATA AHCI mode,
again, without having to reinstall Windows.

???
More than likely you will need to redo the drive. Either make an image
with Ghost or Drive Image and then restore the drive after you switch to
ACHI mode or reinstall everything. By changing the way the drive is
written to and accessed you caused the problem. It would be the same if
you had a RAID setup and moved the drive to a different machine that
used a different RAID controller. Data is very sensitive.

That has been asked before and the switch to AHCI has to be made before
installing anything.

However, people who've made the switch have not reported any significant
speed improvement.

--g

it is possible that a repair install may fix the problem.
have found that the system will auto adjust from AHCI to IDE but n ot the other way around.



--







"Barry Watzman" wrote in message ...
Ok, I have a Gigabyte GA-ex58-UDR3 motherboard, but actually I think
that this question is pretty generic and would apply to almost any
modern motherboard.

I have a SATA hard drive, connected to a SATA port of the Intel ICH10R
chipset [actually, I have two SATA hard drives, and two SATA optical
drives]. The motherboard has a "Gigabyte" IDE/SATA controller on it to
provide an IDE port (and additional SATA ports) but since I have no ide
devices, that device is disabled entirely in the BIOS.

Here is the question: The BIOS has two settings for the modes of the
SATA ports (in the Intel ICH10R):

SATA RAID/AHCI Mode (choices are Disabled/Raid/AHCI; set to disabled)
SATA Port 0-3 Native Mode (choice are native/legacy, set to native)

And the system works fine. But it's using "IDE Emulation" to access the
hard drive.

So I set the SATA RAID/AHIC Mode to AHCI .... and the system won't boot.
It crashes during bootup, which causes a loop of continuous resets.

FWIW, I was pretty sure (certain, really) that when I installed this
system (Windows XP SP3, by the way), I used an F6 floppy driver to setup
the system.

So the question: I'd really like the SATA ports operating in AHCI mode.
How do I get there WITHOUT doing a total reinstall of Windows? I
thought I had the necessary SATA driver installed (via the F6 driver I
installed when I first configured the system), but apparently not. So,
again: What do I do to convert the system from accessing the SATA hard
drives via IDE emulation to accessing then in native SATA AHCI mode,
again, without having to reinstall Windows.

???

On Nov 9, 6:57 pm, Barry Watzman wrote:
Ok, I have a Gigabyte GA-ex58-UDR3 motherboard, but actually I think
that this question is pretty generic and would apply to almost any
modern motherboard.

I have a SATA hard drive, connected to a SATA port of the Intel ICH10R
chipset [actually, I have two SATA hard drives, and two SATA optical
drives]. The motherboard has a "Gigabyte" IDE/SATA controller on it to
provide an IDE port (and additional SATA ports) but since I have no ide
devices, that device is disabled entirely in the BIOS.

Here is the question: The BIOS has two settings for the modes of the
SATA ports (in the Intel ICH10R):

SATA RAID/AHCI Mode (choices are Disabled/Raid/AHCI; set to disabled)
SATA Port 0-3 Native Mode (choice are native/legacy, set to native)

And the system works fine. But it's using "IDE Emulation" to access the
hard drive.

So I set the SATA RAID/AHIC Mode to AHCI .... and the system won't boot.
It crashes during bootup, which causes a loop of continuous resets.

FWIW, I was pretty sure (certain, really) that when I installed this
system (Windows XP SP3, by the way), I used an F6 floppy driver to setup
the system.

So the question: I'd really like the SATA ports operating in AHCI mode.
How do I get there WITHOUT doing a total reinstall of Windows? I
thought I had the necessary SATA driver installed (via the F6 driver I
installed when I first configured the system), but apparently not. So,
again: What do I do to convert the system from accessing the SATA hard
drives via IDE emulation to accessing then in native SATA AHCI mode,
again, without having to reinstall Windows.

???

Barry,

By now you may have solved this problem. FWIW, if anyone else follows
this thread...

My experience is with an ep45-ud3r.
You started with the Ich10r running in IDE mode. Once you booted into
Win, any attempt to install the AHCI/Raid drivers from the included
DVD will
fail since the device is off in the Bios.

The driver you want is the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. To turn on
the Raid/AHCI device on Ich10r and not crash,
the other Mass Storage device can be used as a temporary crutch while
you install drivers.
So...
turn off the machine (complete shutdown) and move the SATA cable for
your HD over to the GSATA. Boot up, go into the
Bios, navigate to the Advanced Bios. Turn on the AHCI in Ich10r (near
top of menu). Then enable the on-board GSATA device (lower in the
menu), but
keep it running in IDE mode.

Now when you startup Win, it will see the new Ich10r device and offer
to set it up. Grab your DVD or get the latest drivers from the GA
site.
Once you install the Mass Storage driver, check inside the Device
Manager to confirm success.

Of course, you should now hard shutdown again and reverse your SATA
cables back to the original configuration.

To avoid looping restarts and get some feedback on any crashes, before
you reverse the connections, do
right click, My Computer-properties-Advanced-startup and shutdown-
uncheck restart immediately after a crash.
Now when a crash occurs with a BSOD, you can see what the msg is and
if any driver is involved.

--
Mark