Enabling SATA mode on SATA drives in XP

Looks like I'm currently using my SATA drives in IDE emulation mode
through the motherboard. The SATA drives appear under the "IDE ATA/ATAPI
controllers" section of Device Manager. All SATA drives appear to be
running in UDMA Mode 6 (ATA/133) at present. Question is will there be
any noticeable difference in performance if I switch them into SATA
mode? Second question, is it worth bothering under XP, when the drives
may fail to boot if any change is made?

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:

Looks like I'm currently using my SATA drives in IDE emulation mode through the motherboard. The SATA drives appear
under the "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" section of Device Manager. All SATA drives appear to be running in UDMA Mode 6
(ATA/133) at present. Question is will there be any noticeable difference in performance if I switch them into SATA
mode?

Nope.

Second question, is it worth bothering under XP,

Nope.

when the drives may fail to boot if any change is made?

You can always change the mode back if that happens.

On or about Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:46:08 -0500 did Yousuf Khan
dribble thusly:

Looks like I'm currently using my SATA drives in IDE emulation mode
through the motherboard. The SATA drives appear under the "IDE ATA/ATAPI
controllers" section of Device Manager. All SATA drives appear to be
running in UDMA Mode 6 (ATA/133) at present. Question is will there be
any noticeable difference in performance if I switch them into SATA
mode? Second question, is it worth bothering under XP, when the drives
may fail to boot if any change is made?

There will be no performance difference, and the OS *will* fail to boot.

Switching from IDE emulation to AHCI is a pain in Windows. The only real
reason to do it is to enable an eSATA port to work properly.

Mike Ruskai wrote:
Switching from IDE emulation to AHCI is a pain in Windows. The only real
reason to do it is to enable an eSATA port to work properly.

You mean for hot plugging support?

Yousuf Khan

On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:46:08 -0500, Yousuf Khan wrote:

Looks like I'm currently using my SATA drives in IDE emulation mode
through the motherboard. The SATA drives appear under the "IDE ATA/ATAPI
controllers" section of Device Manager. All SATA drives appear to be
running in UDMA Mode 6 (ATA/133) at present. Question is will there be
any noticeable difference in performance if I switch them into SATA
mode? Second question, is it worth bothering under XP, when the drives
may fail to boot if any change is made?

Yousuf Khan


On a new system with XP pro installed, my SATA drives were unbelievably slow
in IDE mode - a 1 gig file copy between 2 (real) hard drives took over a
minute, maybe 2. Also AHCI mode will allow NCQ to be turned on which speeds
up random file access and increases drive reliability (less drive head
movements).

AHCI mode is worth the effort to enable IMO, however you will need to either
install the AHCI drivers at XP installation time using F6 or slipstream the
AHCI drivers in an XP CD which is not exactly easy as pie.

Hg wrote:
On a new system with XP pro installed, my SATA drives were unbelievably slow
in IDE mode - a 1 gig file copy between 2 (real) hard drives took over a
minute, maybe 2. Also AHCI mode will allow NCQ to be turned on which speeds
up random file access and increases drive reliability (less drive head
movements).

AHCI mode is worth the effort to enable IMO, however you will need to either
install the AHCI drivers at XP installation time using F6 or slipstream the
AHCI drivers in an XP CD which is not exactly easy as pie.

So you're suggesting it is worth the effort for a new installation, but
what about for an existing installation?

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:
Looks like I'm currently using my SATA drives in IDE emulation mode
through the motherboard. The SATA drives appear under the "IDE ATA/ATAPI
controllers" section of Device Manager. All SATA drives appear to be
running in UDMA Mode 6 (ATA/133) at present. Question is will there be
any noticeable difference in performance if I switch them into SATA
mode? Second question, is it worth bothering under XP, when the drives
may fail to boot if any change is made?


Another question, if I were to enable the AHCI/SATA drivers, I'd have to
go into my BIOS and turn on Nvidia RAID support, but disable each
individual drive as belonging to a RAID set, right?

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:
Hg wrote:
On a new system with XP pro installed, my SATA drives were unbelievably slow
in IDE mode - a 1 gig file copy between 2 (real) hard drives took over a
minute, maybe 2. Also AHCI mode will allow NCQ to be turned on which speeds
up random file access and increases drive reliability (less drive head
movements).

AHCI mode is worth the effort to enable IMO, however you will need to either
install the AHCI drivers at XP installation time using F6 or slipstream the
AHCI drivers in an XP CD which is not exactly easy as pie.

So you're suggesting it is worth the effort for a new installation, but
what about for an existing installation?

I have XP running with AHCI. I am not sure what I did, but I think
I just installed the controller drivers while still in IDE mode.
If I remember correctly, then installing with IDE and then upgrading
to AHCI is possible.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email:
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans

me/2 wrote:
Thsi worked for me a few weeks ago on an existing XP installation
without having to reinstall the o/s.

http://blog.mytwocents.it/?p=11

me/2

Thanks, looks like a fine article. My board uses Nvidia rather than
Intel, so I'm going to have to find equivalent analogies.

Yousuf Khan

On or about Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:59:32 -0500 did Yousuf Khan
dribble thusly:

Mike Ruskai wrote:
Switching from IDE emulation to AHCI is a pain in Windows. The only real
reason to do it is to enable an eSATA port to work properly.

You mean for hot plugging support?

More like hot unplugging. You will be able to attach a drive easily enough,
but Windows will not give you the means to safely remove it without data loss.