AHCI question

[pushVTEC]

I just noticed in my bios, that AHCI mode is not disabled for my SATAII drives. I read that this should be specified during windows setup, but is that the only way, or can I change it now and be ok? I'm guessing no, but it's worth a shot, and also is it worth the performance increase to enable ahci? Rig is in my sig, and are there any other DS3 tweaks I should look for if I do need to do a re-install? And do I have to re-format or can I do a 'repair' install and do the F6 then, I think I saw somewhere you could, but I'm not sure

 

[pushVTEC]

DOH! i don't have a floppy disk drive so I can't load the AHCI drivers as windows setup doesn't support pulling the drivers from a cdrom Guess I'll have to go buy one. So I guess is this trouble worth the performance gain, and how much will it affect my performance?

 

[xtknight]

It should be specified before a driver is loaded. So, you can install in PATA emulation mode (non-AHCI), then install your native SATA drivers under Windows, reboot, enter CMOS setup and enable AHCI, and start Windows. That's what I did with my hp dv2000 laptop (which doesn't have a floppy, and the freaking MS setup is stuck in the dark ages only taking floppies). You must disable AHCI before you try to install Windows if you don't have a floppy driver disk (F6 disk) ready. Unless for some odd reason Windows actually has native SATA drivers included for your controller. Hopefully Vista will include native SATA drivers for a wider range of hardware.