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Installing an SSD on an old Motherboard

Tags:
  • SSD
  • Tom's Hardware
  • Motherboards
August 14, 2014 4:51:41 AM

Hi all, just want to start by giving appreciation to all of the help that the members of this forum give to their struggling comrades, it's rare that i have a problem that I can't find a pre-existing answer to on tom's hardware, so kudos :)  I do however have a bit of a conundrum that I haven't been able to find an answer to yet, so here goes:

My current system:
Core2quad q6600, slightly overclocked to 2.6Ghz
Asrock 4core 1333glan r2.0 (sata II x4)
4gb kingston pc2 6400 running at 400 Mhz
MSI Gaming 750 gtx ti (overkill with this system but i got a good price and it will follow me to next system)
Vista Home Premium 32bit
Seagate 360 HDD (sounds like it's on its last legs)
I use flexraid as well with 3 WD green 3tb drives held in a jbod enclosure and a 2tb external drive.

I've had this system since early 2008 and it's served me well over the years, currently being used as a jack of all trades plex server, htpc and gaming rig. I was planning on building a new machine to fulfill the gaming and primary htpc role in the next few months, and then using this one purely as a plex server/secondary plex client in my bedroom.

Vista and the 360 hdd had been behaving increasingly erratically of late, so i was planning on upgrading to a 120gb samsung evo 840 ssd in the next few days with a clean install of 64bit vista to speed things up somewhat. however i have been reading that i would need to change sata storage controller mode to AHCI from IDE. Now i have searched high and low in the BIOS, BIOS specs and the BIOS manual, and i can't find any mention of AHCI, so I have to conclude that the board doesn't support it.

I was prepared for the fact that I would be constricted by the lack of sata III and the meagre amount of sata ports full stop, but all my storage is being accessed through a usb 3 card in a pci x1 slot anyway, so i'm used to slow storage. However, is the non-AHCI compatability a deal breaker for this motherboard? I'm half prepared for the fact that i may have to get a new MB-CPU combo to fulfill the plex server role if the q6600 can't handle it any more(probably an AMD 6 or 8 core for transcoding), but there are a few cons to this for me:


  • i've already set aside £800 (around $1300) or so for the gaming build(i like my machines to last a while), so i don't really want to have to outlay another £200-300 ($300-450) for new components
  • I'd also need to get a new OS and flexraid license, which would be a further £100 total, when i already have both of those things for the q6600 machine
  • i'm reluctant to discard the q6600 when it's still going strongly. i know i could try to replace the motherboard, but the compatible list seems so small, and added functionality so narrow that i might as well get a new system if i go down that route


  • So my main question to the forum is: are there workarounds that i don't know about for the ahci issue? if there are, then i can keep the q6600 going for a few more years as a server, but if there aren't then i may have to retire it once and for all once i get a new machine. I'd say i'm probably a beginner-intermediate with both hardware and software stuff, I know i have done some things that, in hindsight, don't make much sense, so please don't be afraid to call me a fool, I can take it.

    Thanks in advance and sorry for the essay, i just wanted all of the background to be out there
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