Switching from RAID to AHCI

[zuffy]

I was using RAID 0 in Windows 7. Now that I got my SSD, I cloned my OS over to the SSD. Great, it's working fine but I would like to switch back to AHCI in the BIOS. Problem is the OS would reboot during the bootup. I've search the forum and google for answers. Found a Microsoft article about enabling the msahci in the registry. Well, that didn't work.

Short of reinstalling Windows 7, any other suggestions? The other thing I did not tried yet was disabling the iastor and iastorv in the registry.

 

[zuffy]

Confirmed, disabling iastor and iastorv didn't help. Windows would just reboot during bootup. I guess if there no other options when I get a chance, I will reinstall Windows 7 to 64-bit since it's 32-bit now.

 

[gsuburban]

AHCI is on the quiet according to all my research results and Intel says very little about it other than is does enable the hard drive performance features and allow full SATA 3 performance.

Windows Vista and 7 (both are the same) have microsoft AHCI drives built in and with bios AHCI enabled, windows Vista or above will install in AHCI mode by default while XP will not. With XP, you have to use the F6 option during windows setup.

I've never experienced an AHCI issue with Vista or above however, your situation in clone drive to drive obviously has something to do with it. You can try to use the Intel AHCI drivers that came with your motherboard drivers disk or go to Intel.com and obtain their newer drivers. Maybe that will reset something so it'll boot up.

 

[zuffy]

Got the latest from Intel. Ran setup. It claim the software was installed successful but it didn't install anything. Also, tried to update the RAID controller manually in Device Manager. Did not detect a compatible driver. Oh well, I should just give up.

 

[ihyagp]

No real need. iastor runs single drives as AHCI even if the controller is set for RAID. Install the latest from intel and forget about it.

If you're hellbent on doing this though, stick the boot drive on another controller (install drivers for it first), set the ich to ahci, boot from the 2nd controller, reinstall the intel storage drivers, reboot, shut down, put the drive back onto the ich, then boot normally.