Has my MB's AHCI controller failed?

[ssilverm]

For the last ten months I have been running an ASUS P5K Premium WiFi AP board with two Samsung Spinpoint drives operating in AHCI mode. Everything has been fine until about a month ago when a number of problems began to appear. These included:

- the system randomly freezing for up to half a minute

- frequent and regular Vista reports of errors on an IDE port that has nothing attached to it

- one of the drives occasionally disappearing from view of both the operating system and the BIOS until the system is powered off and on (a warm boot doesn't correct it.)

In an attempt to fix this I have, over the last few weeks, swapped drives, replaced SATA cables, connected the drives to different ports, and completely reinstalled Vista from scratch. None of this has helped.

A few days ago it occurred to me to switch the board from operating the drives in AHCI mode to IDE mode. Since then, all the problems have disappeared. The system also seems much faster, which is not at all what I would have expected.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the motherboard has developed a fault, and that I should return it immediately under warranty.

Or am I overlooking something?

Steve S.

 

[GhislainG]

AHCI and IDE is the same controller (ICH9R). If there's an issue with the controller, it should (or will eventually) also fail in IDE. When running in AHCI mode, did you download and install Intel's latest drivers?

 

[ssilverm]

When running in AHCI mode, did you download and install Intel's latest drivers?

Absolutely. I'm almost obsessive about ensuring that all my drivers are right up to date. Also bear in mind that AHCI mode worked perfectly for around nine months. It's only been a problem for the last few weeks.

Steve S.

 

[GhislainG]

Did you contact Asus about that problem?