Trouble with AHCI mode on GA-EP45-UD3R

[emcher]

I just bought the Intel Budget combo in the Anandtech $1000 and under article.

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=3486&p=5

Everything is cool, but I'd like to use the ACHI mode vs IDE mode for the HD.

During the initial XP-SP3 install, it did not recognize my drive (I bought 750 gig WD HD vs. the 640 gig one). I will say that during the bootup prelim screen, the system did recognize that the drive was there. So then I loaded the Drivers onto a floppy disk per the "Making a SATA/RAID Driver Diskette' instructions.

But when it stopped and asked to insert the drivers disk in the floppy and hit enter, it did not recognize the drivers on the floppy in order for me to pick the correct listing on the menu.

Any ideas on what I need to do to get this working.

Of course, I'm making the assumption that using the ACHI driver is superior to using IDE. If not, then there's no need for me to proceed further. But I believe I'll get better performance by using ACHI. I have no desire to use RAID.

One other thing. I've installed the drivers using the Gigabyte cd.

And I've tried to changing to ACHI mode. During the reboot process, it recognizes the drive, then gets to the Windows XP loading page, but the screen is very dim, and then restarts a few seconds later.

 

[VirtualLarry]

AHCI isn't all that useful. Hotswap and NCQ are the only features that differentiate it from IDE mode (aside from incompatibility). NCQ is still pretty half-baked as far as improved performance goes, and hot-swap isn't really useful unless you've installed an eSATA bracket that connects to internal SATA ports and you want to use an external HD.

IDE mode is compatible with everything, especially XP.

Now, if you wanted to run RAID on the motherboard, that's a different story, as that is useful, but to install RAID also puts the controller into RAID/AHCI mode, which of course requires the drivers.

The UD3R and UD3P have an additional Jmicron chipset, for IDE and two extra (purple) SATA ports. You can still leave those in IDE mode, and install your boot system HD on those ports (along with a SATA DVD burner), and then switch the main chipset's SATA ports to RAID/AHCI mode, and then you can install XP like normal (without using F6 drivers), and then you can install the Intel ICH9R/ICH10R raid drivers from within Windows, and everything will be happy.

 

[emcher]

I have installed the RAID/ACHI drivers from within in Windows.

So you are suggesting using the GSATA port in IDE mode for my boot drive.

Then if I add any drives in the future, I could use the ACHI configured port for those drives, right? And I won't really be missing out on performance that much, correct?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Correct.

 

[kam11]

recognize my drive (I bought 750 gig WD HD vs. the 640 gig one). I will say that during the bootup prelim screen, the system did recognize that the drive was there. So then I loaded the Drivers onto a floppy disk per the "Making a SATA/RAID Driver Diskette' instructions.

 

[Absolution75]

You can slipstream the ACHI drivers into the windows xp cd. Use the XP equivalent of nLite (or maybe nLite works for xp, I just remember there was a different version).

I had to do this for my friends xp install just recently (raid drivers + no floppy), worked like a charm.