I am having an issue with my new Biostar TA870+ V5.2 (AMD 870 NB and SB850) where I cannot enable AHCI for all my drives. I would like to enable AHCI mode for all of my drives as I use Windows 7 x64 and really like the idea of being able to Hot-Swap many of my drives.
I fully realize that there is little performance gain using AHCI, and that a more Reputable shall we say MB company might have been a good investment, but the price was right =) I have also seen many reference to AMD Chipsets being bad at AHCI. So I suppose this may be the issue, though I have not been able to find a good explanation as to why
I have the following drives installed:
SATA 1 - OCZ 120GB Vertex 2 SSD as my boot drive
SATA 2 - LG SATA DVD-RW
SATA 3 - Samsung 160GB 7200RPM drive as an applications drive
SATA 4 - WD 250GB Drive for storage
SATA 5 - WD 250GB Drive for backups
When I enable AHCI in the BIOS (CHIPSET > SB SATA CONTROLLER > SATA TYPE > "AHCI"
Only SATA port 5 is seen as "SATA," all others are seen as IDE. (I did not actually have a drive connected to SATA 4 at the time, so it may have also been SATA )
If a another BIOS option on the same screen, "IDE Combined mode" is disabled, all drives are seen as IDE
If I set the SATA mode to either "NATIVE IDE" or "IDE -> AHCI", all drives are recognized as SATA, but I do not believe that windows recognizes them as AHCI drives. I suspect this as there is no Eject option in Windows, though I am not sure how to verify if AHCI is actually turned on.
It seems as though only the last port SATA-5 (and perhaps SATA-4 and the eSATA port, I have not been able to test) respect the AHCI mode when it is set explicitly
If the drive is seen as IDE, but AHCI features are still available, that is OK, but Id like to know if this is the case
I see the same (or very similar) question posed a few other places and have contacted support for an answer. Here is what I can find so far based on an ASRock manual with similar chip-set and bios:
[FONT="]
ASRock870 Extreme3
Onboard SATA Controller
Use this item to enable or disable the Onboard SATA Controller feature.
SATA Operation Mode
Use this item to adjust SATA Operation Mode. The default value of this
option is [IDE]. Configuration options: [AHCI], [RAID] and [IDE].
SATA IDE Combined Mode
This item is for SATA3_5 and eSATA ports only. Use this item to enable or
disable SATA IDE combined mode. The default value is [Enabled].
If you want to build RAID on SATA3_5 and eSATA ports, please
disable this item.
[/FONT]So it looks to me like the "SATA IDE Combined Mode" option allows you to set SATA port 4 and or 5 along with the eSATA to a different configuration then the other ports. I.e., SATA1, SATA2 and SATA3 are AHCI and SATA4, SATA5 and eSATA are IDE. This could be useful if you wanted only the first few ports in a RAID array or needed to install Windows from a CD drive that could not/was not be part of the AHCI or RAID configuration...
Either way... I still cannot see how to make all my SATA ports AHCI.
And, does anyone know what the BIOS option SATA Type "IDE -> AHCI" means?
This is all that the manual has to say...
OnChip SATA Channel
This option allows you to enable the on-chip Serial ATA.
Options: Enabled (Default) / Disabled
OnChip SATA Type
This option allows you to select the on-chip Serial ATA operation mode.
Options: Native IDE (Default) / RAID / AHCI / Legacy IDE / IDE -> AHCI
SATA IDE Combined Mode
This option controls the SATA/PATA combined mode.
Options: Enabled (Default) / Disabled
Thank you!
I fully realize that there is little performance gain using AHCI, and that a more Reputable shall we say MB company might have been a good investment, but the price was right =) I have also seen many reference to AMD Chipsets being bad at AHCI. So I suppose this may be the issue, though I have not been able to find a good explanation as to why
I have the following drives installed:
SATA 1 - OCZ 120GB Vertex 2 SSD as my boot drive
SATA 2 - LG SATA DVD-RW
SATA 3 - Samsung 160GB 7200RPM drive as an applications drive
SATA 4 - WD 250GB Drive for storage
SATA 5 - WD 250GB Drive for backups
When I enable AHCI in the BIOS (CHIPSET > SB SATA CONTROLLER > SATA TYPE > "AHCI"
Only SATA port 5 is seen as "SATA," all others are seen as IDE. (I did not actually have a drive connected to SATA 4 at the time, so it may have also been SATA )
If a another BIOS option on the same screen, "IDE Combined mode" is disabled, all drives are seen as IDE
If I set the SATA mode to either "NATIVE IDE" or "IDE -> AHCI", all drives are recognized as SATA, but I do not believe that windows recognizes them as AHCI drives. I suspect this as there is no Eject option in Windows, though I am not sure how to verify if AHCI is actually turned on.
It seems as though only the last port SATA-5 (and perhaps SATA-4 and the eSATA port, I have not been able to test) respect the AHCI mode when it is set explicitly
If the drive is seen as IDE, but AHCI features are still available, that is OK, but Id like to know if this is the case
I see the same (or very similar) question posed a few other places and have contacted support for an answer. Here is what I can find so far based on an ASRock manual with similar chip-set and bios:
[FONT="]
ASRock870 Extreme3
Onboard SATA Controller
Use this item to enable or disable the Onboard SATA Controller feature.
SATA Operation Mode
Use this item to adjust SATA Operation Mode. The default value of this
option is [IDE]. Configuration options: [AHCI], [RAID] and [IDE].
SATA IDE Combined Mode
This item is for SATA3_5 and eSATA ports only. Use this item to enable or
disable SATA IDE combined mode. The default value is [Enabled].
If you want to build RAID on SATA3_5 and eSATA ports, please
disable this item.
[/FONT]So it looks to me like the "SATA IDE Combined Mode" option allows you to set SATA port 4 and or 5 along with the eSATA to a different configuration then the other ports. I.e., SATA1, SATA2 and SATA3 are AHCI and SATA4, SATA5 and eSATA are IDE. This could be useful if you wanted only the first few ports in a RAID array or needed to install Windows from a CD drive that could not/was not be part of the AHCI or RAID configuration...
Either way... I still cannot see how to make all my SATA ports AHCI.
And, does anyone know what the BIOS option SATA Type "IDE -> AHCI" means?
This is all that the manual has to say...
OnChip SATA Channel
This option allows you to enable the on-chip Serial ATA.
Options: Enabled (Default) / Disabled
OnChip SATA Type
This option allows you to select the on-chip Serial ATA operation mode.
Options: Native IDE (Default) / RAID / AHCI / Legacy IDE / IDE -> AHCI
SATA IDE Combined Mode
This option controls the SATA/PATA combined mode.
Options: Enabled (Default) / Disabled
Thank you!
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