How to switch back to SATA after xp install

jeb1517

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I have a GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard. I did a fresh install of windows xp on a WD 250gb SATA II hdd. At first the install said it didn't find any harddrives so I changed the setting in BIOS to IDE mode. Install went just fine. I installed all the updates including sp3. I also installed all the drivers that came on the Gigabyte motherboard CD (including chipset/SATA drivers). Now I would like to switch back to SATA instead of IDE mode. I have 3 options in BIOS: IDE, ACHI (or something), or RAID. I only have one drive so I selected ACHI but computer keeps restarting before 2 xp loading bars go across the screen. Still works fine in IDE mode. How do I get SATA working? Thanks.
 

rahul_cracker

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hi
See if you have purchased a SATA drive so you cant make it to and IDE mode its a different physical 40 pin connection.If you keep these IDE settings they will cause the problems you have mentioned above.use only sata option from the bios
 

SomeJoe7777

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You can ignore the above response -- the IDE/AHCI/RAID selector in the BIOS has nothing to do with the physical drive connection.

To switch your hard drive mode from IDE to AHCI, you will need to follow the procedure in the sticky at the top of the forum Switching Storage Controllers without Reinstalling Windows.

If you don't want to go through that procedure, you can reinstall Windows with the BIOS selected to AHCI, and use "F6" during the Windows installation to load the AHCI SATA drivers. You will need to load the drivers from a floppy if you are installing Windows XP, you can load them from floppy, CD-ROM, or USB if you are installing Windows Vista. If you want to install Windows XP and don't have a floppy drive, you will need to make a custom Windows XP installation CD using NLite, embedding the SATA drivers into the custom installation CD.
 

Paperdoc

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I suspect the confusion is in the way the mobo manual uses terms. SomeJoe7777 is right, of course, this has nothing to do with the physical drives.

Your mobo offers to handle the real SATA II HDD in one of three ways. It can make it appear to the OS as if it were an IDE drive, which means among other things you will not have to worry about providing SATA drivers for the OS to use the drive. That is what you have done already, and it works. This does NOT mean that you have lost any SATA II performance. The other choices are to use the AHCI option, which would require some adjustment to load the appropriate drivers, as SomeJoe7777 says, or to use your drive as part of a RAID array, which it seems you don't want (and I agree you don't need RAID!)

Bottom line is, you are already getting most of what SATA II offers, with a few possible exceptions. (SomeJoe7777 may be able to clarify that part.) So probably you do not need to change anything.
 

jeb1517

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Ok cool so I guess there's no real reason to go through all that trouble if the drive is already operating at SATA II speeds. Thanks guys.
 

jeb1517

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Over the weekend I was a little bored so I decided to try to get my harddrive running in SATA mode. I went to Gigabyte's website and downloaded the floppy SATA driver. I copied the files to a floppy disk and started the windows setup. After many tries I finally got the floppy disk to work without error 1024 on line xxxx. It installed the drivers and went through the rest of XP installation. But still the same thing happens when I check the AHCI, hard drive isn't recognized. I have it back to IDE mode again. It really doesn't matter but if I want to use RAID in the future I'm worried I won't be able to.
 

jeb1517

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UPDATE: I was looking through my BIOS and I saw an option that enabled SATA/RAID mode but kept two of the SATA ports operating as IDE at the same time. So I followed SomeJoe's advice and went through the guide. I enabled SATA and connected my hard drive to the SATA port that was operating as IDE. When I booted into windows, the found new hardware wizard started up saying it found a new PCI device, which I'm assuming is the RAID/SATA controller. It searched the motherboard CD for the proper driver and installed it (it found 3 drivers but they all had the same driver version so I couldn't tell the difference, I just picked the first one). So I got the SATA working as SATA should be. HOWEVER, with SATA enabled, windows hangs on boot up. At the end of the 3rd loading bar, it freezes every time. It freezes for about 10 seconds then continues to boot up just fine. For now I've left everything as IDE because that pause during boot up is very annoying.