New to SSD drives and cloned failing HD

[Spydermag68]

I had a failing regular HD and and decided to replace it with an Samsung EVO SSD. I used the software to clone the failing drive to the SSD. That worked well but the performance software says that that I would get better performance if I enable AHCI in BIOS.

I went into the BIOS and changed one at a time different settings to AHCI but the computer would flash the BIOS screen and then start booting. The windows flag would start to come together and then it would reboot.

Would a separate SATA III card in a PCIe slot solve this problem?

Thanks in advance.

Computer Setup:
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
Samsung EVO SSD

TL;DR:
New cloned ssd
Reboot loop when set to AHCI

 

[Elixer]

You can't switch to AHCI in BIOS until you have the drivers ready on windows.

Also, I hope the cloning program that you used was SSD aware, if not, then you have a unaligned SSD, and the performance will be bad.

I suppose one way to fix it would be have AHCI on, and then do a repair OS option.
The other way is to switch to AHCI drivers first, then enable in BIOS.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

You can't switch to AHCI in BIOS until you have the drivers ready on windows.

Also, I hope the cloning program that you used was SSD aware, if not, then you have a unaligned SSD, and the performance will be bad.

I suppose one way to fix it would be have AHCI on, and then do a repair OS option.
The other way is to switch to AHCI drivers first, then enable in BIOS.

Solving the conversion from RAID or possibly IDE to AHCI (or vice-versa) requires coordinating the changes to the registry file (in Windows) with the changes in BIOS.

Say you want to convert from RAID to AHCI. You either make manual changes to the registry keys for the drivers, or you go to the MS website and find the "Fix It" button which makes those changes automatically. You would do this while still operating in RAID mode. As soon as you have a successful "Fix It" session, you would then reboot and catch the BIOS entry key immediately to edit the BIOS and change the storage mode to AHCI from RAID (or IDE).

Simply changing the BIOS is the reason for either the manual instructions or the "Fix It:" If it were that easy, these issues would never arise. But just changing the mode in BIOS renders the system unbootable. It might be fixed with an install-disc "repair" -- I'm not sure.

This leaves me with wondering about the OP's BIOS behavior: As soon as he enters BIOS, it exits and begins booting to the OS. He doesn't say, but he implies cyclical reboot behavior, so I'm guessing that he never really boots successfully into the Windows Desktop. That would be consistent with the coordination aspect of OS and BIOS setting. I've just never seen BIOS malfunctions such as this before.

I think the OP should reset his CMOS to default, maybe even remove the wafer-battery and replacing it. Hopefully he remembers his custom BIOS settings, and can then restore them -- excepting the change he would make in the storage mode.

 

[Elixer]

The reboot is a BSOD.
By default, when a BSOD happens, it automatically reboots the machine.

I have done what I mentioned above, using repair install, and that worked, and I also know of someone who tried the other method, and they said it also works.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I tried all that a couple times.

Here's my solution: recover data, format, reinstall windows. Beer.

 

[Spydermag68]

I used the program from M$ to change the registry. Rebooted into BIOS to change the setting, and then into windows. Worked great. Thanks all.