Steven P. Administrators Posted September 27, 2010 Administrators Share Posted September 27, 2010 Whilst experimenting with Mac OS X I needed to enable AHCI Mode on my harddisk controller to even be able to install it, while I'm now back on a fresh installation of Windows 7 (leaving the setting on AHCI Mode) could anyone tell me the benefits of AHCI over IDE mode? Is it suited for stuff like RAID and has no effect on single (non RAID) drive use? I read somewhere that AHCI allows the harddisk to better manage writes to the drive, sort of like a real time defrag? Anyway would appreciate some more insight to it. I noticed my drive isn't active as much anymore when the PC is idle too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Packet1009 Posted September 27, 2010 Share Posted September 27, 2010 in general, AHCI mode is faster than IDE emu mode. it allows for things like NCQ (native command queuing) and hotplug for SATA you did the right thing link: http://expertester.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/ahci-vs-ide-–-benchmark-advantage/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strelok1911 Posted September 27, 2010 Share Posted September 27, 2010 One main feature that is supported by some newer motherboards with AHCI on is hot-swapable drives. Of course, not the Windows one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_tux_ Posted September 27, 2010 Share Posted September 27, 2010 it enables drive hot swapping and ncq Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven P. Administrators Posted September 27, 2010 Author Administrators Share Posted September 27, 2010 Thanks guys, seems it was a good idea to leave it there then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IceBreakerG Posted September 27, 2010 Share Posted September 27, 2010 This will explain what AHCI is for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahci It's specifically for SATA devices (Macs don't use IDE devices anymore), and it helps with drive detection and provides a standard for the SATA interface. This was something that wasn't really possible with the old IDE mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger H. Veteran Posted September 27, 2010 Veteran Share Posted September 27, 2010 I always do AHCI - dunno why but I just feel like running SATA in IDE mode there's gotta be some performance lost since it's has to do some emulation and all that jazz. So running it in it's default/native mode should make things go smoother :) Love that my DVDRW in my laptop is now SATA instead of the bridge chip they were using before. :) (no benefit once again, just like it :D) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angel Blue01 Posted September 27, 2010 Share Posted September 27, 2010 According to the Wikipedia article, Windows 7, Linux and MacOS all support it, so it sounds like a good thing to keep turned on. :) What about XP or Vista? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven P. Administrators Posted September 27, 2010 Author Administrators Share Posted September 27, 2010 Ah yes, this is what I was looking for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Command_Queuing Thanks (Y) According to the Wikipedia article, Windows 7, Linux and MacOS all support it, so it sounds like a good thing to keep turned on. :) What about XP or Vista? Windows Vista supports it natively too, while XP needs a driver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Singh400 Posted September 27, 2010 Share Posted September 27, 2010 For me, none. I tried it out a while back, and didn't notice anything special or unique about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazure Posted September 27, 2010 Share Posted September 27, 2010 I don't get why anyone would NOT use AHCI? Why gimp your modern SATA hardware with an ancient standards limitation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted September 27, 2010 Veteran Share Posted September 27, 2010 Some people still run old operating systems like XP, or simply don't know it exists (It's set to IDE by default on most boards in case somebody wants to install something old like XP or so) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazure Posted September 27, 2010 Share Posted September 27, 2010 Some people still run old operating systems like XP, or simply don't know it exists (It's set to IDE by default on most boards in case somebody wants to install something old like XP or so) If they're running XP on a modern system that benefits from AHCI, they don't really know what they're doing to begin with and gimping their hardware anyways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soldier1st Posted September 28, 2010 Share Posted September 28, 2010 it seems that on newer hardware that XP is starting to need a driver for it wheras it never really did but that must be showing the modern times and that XP is no longer moderm. my mobo does not have an AHCI option(a 2003 mobo would not have it) and my system seems to run fine without it. AHCI is Advanced Host Controller Interface which offers several features like hot swapping,NCQ and a few others that IDE mode does not(that must be my setting). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briangw Posted September 28, 2010 Share Posted September 28, 2010 One main feature that is supported by some newer motherboards with AHCI on is hot-swapable drives. Of course, not the Windows one. Not true, we hot swap EVERYTHING in our Computer Forensics area with AHCI turned on and running Windows XP. They leave the cables out of the empty bays and disconnect/reconnect SATA drives on the fly. I found it funny that I saw this post this AM, as I have been battling to get AHCI to image properly with our new Dell 780 Optiplex PCs in Windows XP. After speaking with Dell, there is a 200 MB System Software pack on their website that assigns the correct IRQs to XP that I did not know about when we started having some issues with a new image I built. Previously, we would turn that mode one and when it hit the XP flag screen, the PC would reboot. The odd thing is that it did that for a particular set of service tag PCs when other similar 780s did not have that issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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