AHCI ruined everything.

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dave_the_nerd

dave_the_nerd

Lifer
Feb 25, 2011
16,991
1,620
126
Ok, so I have a vertex 3, it was working fine jn IDE mode. But directions said to run in AHCI mode if possible.

So I did the registry edit to enable AHCI, installed the intel driver, rebooted, enabled in bios, rebooted again... Everything was painfully slow. Launching applications would lock the computer.

I let it sit for a bit, and when I came back, it was dead. System repair says I don't have a system partition. Boot error.

But it did boot before, and the drivers installed and were working.

So what's the most likely culprit here?
 
ICXRa

ICXRa

Diamond Member
Jan 8, 2001
5,924
0
71
Both, I've always enabled this in BIOS prior to installing, never after the fact.
 
Schmide

Schmide

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2002
5,712
978
126
I take it a month ago was post April 24th when the 2.22 (pdf) firmware was released.

I will say the drive I had go bad from OCZ, a Petrol 64gb. Died after exhibiting the same symptoms. It was running fine, I enabled AHCI, it wouldn't boot fully, etc.
 
Last edited:
Coup27

Coup27

Platinum Member
Jul 17, 2010
2,140
3
81
AHCI is faster than IDE/ATA/compatibility mode or whatever else people call it. Whether it is worth it is whether you can be bothered to reformat with AHCI enabled.

Is the difference between IDE and AHCI like a HDD and an SSD? No way, more like a last generation SSD vs a current generation SSD.
 
jacktesterson

jacktesterson

Diamond Member
Sep 28, 2001
5,493
3
81
If your against reformatting, leave it in IDE mode.

Your going to see like a 5% difference in speed in most scenarios if I remember correctly.
Up to you!
 
K

kmmatney

Diamond Member
Jun 19, 2000
4,363
1
81
I switched from IDE mode to AHCI mode with both of my Intel drives, without issues.

Maybe you should just try a repair-install to see if that gets things working - if not then reformat/install.
 
Engineer

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,230
701
126
I wonder if the drive was aligned properly for AHCI mode? Run AS-SSD and see if the drive is listed as OK in alignment.
 
Engineer

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,230
701
126
(sic)Klown12

(sic)Klown12

Senior member
Nov 27, 2010
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0
76
Engineer said:
If you search Yahoo or Google (AHCI vs IDE SSD), you'll find several articles showing the comparisons. From what I read, AHCI kicks the teeth in of IDE, but not sure if that's just benchmarks or benchmarks and real world testing.
Click to expand...

Usually just benchmarks with a high que depth due to AHCI having NCQ. There will be some real world situations where there is an improvment, but they're relatively rare for a "normal" user.
 
H

Homeles

Platinum Member
Dec 9, 2011
2,580
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(sic)Klown12 said:
Usually just benchmarks with a high que depth due to AHCI having NCQ. There will be some real world situations where there is an improvment, but they're relatively rare for a "normal" user.
Click to expand...
Even if they're minor or unnoticeable, it's free performance. Why not go for it?
 
BFG10K

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,709
3,002
126
Engineer said:
I wonder if the drive was aligned properly for AHCI mode? Run AS-SSD and see if the drive is listed as OK in alignment.
Click to expand...
Any aligment issues will manifest themselves in IDE mode too. All that'll happen is write performance for small files will be slower.

Homeles said:
Even if they're minor or unnoticeable, it's free performance. Why not go for it?
Click to expand...
On some motherboards (like mine) enabling AHCI adds to the POST time over IDE. Also for situations like the OP where AHCI isn't working.
 
Cerb

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
Engineer said:
If you search Yahoo or Google (AHCI vs IDE SSD), you'll find several articles showing the comparisons. From what I read, AHCI kicks the teeth in of IDE, but not sure if that's just benchmarks or benchmarks and real world testing.
Click to expand...
It's both, and the feature you're really seeing working for you is NCQ. You will notice some sites, like AT, use fairly low QDs, which occur in typical usage. High QDs, like 32 and 64, are unrealistic for desktop or mobile use. You can generally consider anything over 8 to be far more than you care about, and even that should be fairly heavy with an SSD. On HDDs, you should feel the difference, whereas SSDs it should generally help with corner cases, and when competing with background I/O.

Instead of the OS scheduling reads and writes in software, not knowing much about your drive (but, admittedly, knowing more about outstanding IO and IOs that will soon need servicing), it can send reads and writes to your drive, and the drive can order them as it sees fit, within some bounds. Without command queuing, the OS has to wait for the drive to finish the last operation, before the next one can be done. Since the drive makers know more about their drives than MS does, the drive can be made to schedule itself better than Windows can schedule for it. On a fairly modern SSD, whether you are fast enough to notice a difference is a big question, of course.
 
Aikouka

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
Why did you install the Intel driver? Personally, I prefer avoiding making two significant system changes at once. Also, I've swapped between IDE and AHCI before using the registry method without any problems.

EDIT:

To note, I always use Microsoft's default AHCI driver.
 
dave_the_nerd

dave_the_nerd

Lifer
Feb 25, 2011
16,991
1,620
126
Aikouka said:
Why did you install the Intel driver? Personally, I prefer avoiding making two significant system changes at once. Also, I've swapped between IDE and AHCI before using the registry method without any problems.

EDIT:

To note, I always use Microsoft's default AHCI driver.
Click to expand...

Because the Microsoft one didn't work, and the AHCI info I found suggested that Intel > Microsoft > nVidia AHCI drivers.
 
C

ccbadd

Senior member
Jan 19, 2004
456
0
76
I installed mine (OCZ Agility3 240) and switched from IDE to AHCI with not problems at all. Sounds like a driver issue to me.
 
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