Help me enable AHCI on a SATA hard disk

I have a Gigabyte EP45 UD3R and it's driving me nuts. This motherboard has 8 chipset SATA ports(Intel ICH10R Southbridge) and 2 Gigabyte SATA2 ports. I'm not interested in the latter, so the options in the BIOS concerning these 8 SATA ports, are(as configured now):

SATA RAID/AHCI Mode : AHCI (Disabled/AHCI/RAID)
SATA Port0-3 Native Mode: Enabled (Enabled/Disabled)

This seems right to me. I have a SATA hard drive and a DVDRW. For now, only the hard drive is connected. With this configuration, when the computer boots, I see a message:
** This version supports only Hard Disk and CDROM drives **
Please wait. This will take few seconds.
and I do have to wait for about 12 secs. After that, Vista can boot. What does it mean? Is it normal?

Sorry, I meant 6 SATA ports.
So, when it scans for drives, why does it tell me that only Hard Disk and CDROMS are supported? A SATA drive is all I have installed. Is this message common for every system? Anyway, what matters to me the boot time impact, and if there is a way to reduce it.

heh, exacly.
Oddly, Vista(x64) load extremely fast. Ok, If it is a common issue, then I guess I don't have to worry about it. Thnx!

I thought it might be useful to jump in on this thread as I seem to be at the same point on the AHCI learning curve as sta7mor.

I am about to change my motherboard to a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R and reinstall the OS (Windows XP SP2) on to a WD Raptor SATA drive.

I wish to install 4 x SATA 2 drives (including the XP drive), 2 x hot-swappable eSATA ports and 1 x IDE DVD writer.

(Note: At some stage in the future I may wish to change the DVD-writer to SATA and I may wish to add another HDD and reconfigure the data HDDs as RAID.)

The Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R has six yellow connectors [SATA2_0....SATA2_5], two purple GSATA connectors [GSATA2_0, GSATA2_1] and a green IDE connector.

I was going to mechanically connect my SATA drives as follows:
SATA2_0.......XP Boot drive
SATA2_1.......Data drive 1
SATA2_2.......Data drive 2
SATA2_3.......Data drive 3
SATA2_4.......Leave vacant for future RAID HDD
SATA2_5.......Leave vacant for future DVD writer
GSATA2_0......eSATA connection
GSATA2_1......eSATA connection
IDE...........DVD writer

Is the above physical arrangment OK? Reading bilbat's post on another thread it might be better to put the eSATA on 4 and 5 and disable the two purple connectors.

How do I set up the SATA ports in the BIOS for correct operation and best performance?

My choice of drivers seems to be
(a) Intel ICH9RICH10R Pre-install Driver (F6 during XP setup)
(b) Intel ICH9RICH10R SATA RAID Driver
(c) Motherboard SATA GB SATA2RAID

Do I install all three? They are all highlighted for XP at the Gigabyte website. I'm guessing that (b) is for the yellow SATA connectors and (c) is for the purple SATA connectors.

Great stuff, thanks... and this answered another question that I had

Once I've physically installed the drives but before I pre-load (F6) the SATA/RAID/AHCI drivers, I have to choose the right options in the CMOS setup:

"SATA RAID/AHCI Mode" I do not want to create RAID, so my options are DISABLED or AHCI. I assume that I should set this to DISABLED unless I want to change the eSATA to a yellow connector (in which case I should select AHCI).

"SATA Port0-3 Native Mode" I assume that I choose ENABLED as my OS is Windows XP. (At a later date, I may install Ubuntu as well).

"Onboard SATA/IDE Device" I assume ENABLED, since I want to connect eSATA to the purple connectors and a DVD drive to the IDE header.

"Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode" has choices of IDE or AHCI or RAID/IDE. I assume that if I choose AHCI to allow hot swapping the eSATA, I can still use the IDE connection for the DVD writer.

Are the assumptions correct?

One last point concerning memory installation: will my RAM voltage be set automatically, or should I manually set it before I load the RAM to stop accidental damage?

All your assumptions here are correct - this will give you hot-swap on the ESATAs, and a faster boot from the Intels if RAID and AHCI are disabled; when you turn either one on, a separate BIOS block initializes the drives - and this takes a few (12-14, in my case, for six drives) seconds each boot... No matter what you pick for the jMicrons (GSATAs), so long as they're not disabled, the IDE ports will always simply work as IDE ports.

All fast memory is actually DDR2-6400 (800) - the JEDEC spec for this dictates a RAM voltage of 1.8V; the manufacturers 'speed-bin' it - that is, test to find the sticks that will run at higher voltage/speed; therefore, an auto setting will certainly not hurt it. That said, when you do a "Load Optimized Defaults', some BIOS will read an extended table on the RAM, and automatically set it to the higher spec - but I can't tell you which ones! (I suppose I should put up a poll, and see if we could collect some data, to tell us which MOBOs and RAM will do this.) Setting it up, if it doesn't automatically 'see' the faster RAM, is relatively simple, and you don't always need all it's spec'd for - I have 8G of G.Skill F2-8500CL5D, which is nominally 1066 and 2.1V, set at 1080 & +.25V (which, again, nominally, would be 2.05V - but gives me an actual 2.01 on the RAM).