What's the difference between 'Extra 6GB SATA Controller' and 'On-Chip ATA Devices' as listed in my BIOS?

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Toomuchprotein

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I have an MSI 760GMA-P34(FX) motherboard, and I'm just trying to setup my BIOS to run AHCI mode with a single harddrive, but there are two different places to select AHCI. The first is [Integrated Peripherals>Extra SATA 6GB Controller] for which the options are IDE or AHCI, and the second is [Integraded Peripherals>On-Chip ATA Devices>RAID Mode] for which the options are IDE, RAID, or AHCI. What is the difference between these two and which do I have to switch in order to run in AHCI? I'm also curious as to why there would be an option to set "RAID Mode" to anything other than "RAID"?

I searched and couldn't find any manual that explains how to setup the BIOS, so if anyone has any resources, that would be awesome. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
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Samat

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Your motherboard has a AsMedia raid controller to provide additional sata ports, and you can set modes for the built in controller and the AsMedia controller separately. If you are not planning to use the raid function on the AsMedia controller you can safely set both to AHCI. There is the option to set raid mode other than raid so you can use the raid controller to handle singe drives without setting up a raid.
 
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Toomuchprotein

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Thanks. Would you mind If I ask where you got that information?
 
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Samat

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I checked the MSI product page for your motherboard, it wasn't initially evident that it was using a third party controller for additional sata ports (very vague description of their product tbh) but they had a driver for the AsMedia controller listed so I assumed it was there.
 
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Toomuchprotein

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Oh cool. Well, thanks again.

Also, the only thing I have plugged into a SATA port on my motherboard is a single hard drive in one of the two SATA 6Gb/s ports. When I change [Integraded Peripherals>On-Chip ATA Devices>RAID Mode] from IDE to AHCI, I get listed under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers in device manager:

ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 1
ATA Channel 1
ATA Channel 2
ATA Channel 3
ATA Channel 4
ATA Channel 5
Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

When I leave [Integraded Peripherals>On-Chip ATA Devices>RAID Mode] set to IDE, I get in device manager:

ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 1
ATA Channel 1
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

Whether I change [Integrated Peripherals>Extra SATA 6GB Controller] to IDE or AHCI makes no difference in device manager.

So why is it that when I change [Integrated Peripherals>Extra SATA 6GB Controller], it makes no difference in device manager, yet when I change [Integraded Peripherals>On-Chip ATA Devices>RAID Mode], it is the only setting that affects whether or not an AHCI controller shows up in device manager? Why does it also cause half of the ATA channels to disappear when set to IDE mode? My hard drive is plugged into one of the SATA ports that should be controlled by the "Extra SATA 6GB Controller" setting.
 
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Samat

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So is it a regular hdd or a ssd and what version of Windows are you running? For regular hdd going to ahci mode shouldn't make much difference. Normally if you switch from ide to ahci mode without some registry change beforehand Windows wont boot.

Windows 7:
Exit all Windows-based programs.
Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
Locate and then click one of the following registry subkeys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV
In the pane on the right side, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.

Windows 8:

Exit all applications
Go to the start screen and type in regedit.
If you see the UAC (User Account Control) dialogue box, just click continue.
Locate the the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\storahci\

Locate the Error Control entry which should have a value of 3. Right-click on the entry name, select Modify, change the value from 3 to 0 and click OK.
Open the StartOverride folder and locate an entry named 0 with a value of 3. Change the value to 0 by following the procedure in step 5.
Restart and enable AHCI in your system BIOS

Make sure you have the latest drivers for the chipset installed.
 
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Toomuchprotein

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I'm running Windows 7. I navigated to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci and the value was already set to 0.
 
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Pauls Bloatware

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So I have the same motherboard and I'm trying to get a clean install of Windows 10 on to a new hard drive... The only problem is it keeps on telling me to enable the disk controller... How do I do that... Please help
 
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