Ahci????

[axlrose]

I have heard a few times about changing a setting in my bios now that I am using an ssd as my boot drive instead of an hdd. I think it was ahci or something close to that. I've been using my ssd for about a week now and not done this. I'm getting nervous. Can anyone help me out herer?

Thanks.

Also, I have Vipre and TuneUp Uitilities running again and I'm wondering if there is anything I need to do with these to make sure they don't mess up my ssd (like doing and automatic defrag or something).

 

[rsinj]

There is nothing to be worried or nervous about.

First thing is if you're sucessfully using your SSD then you're in good shape and have probably already experienced some excellent performance improvements.

As far as the AHCI - if you are able to use that setting for the drive interface in your BIOS, you will get the best performance. However, it is not guaranteed that it will work with your configuration.

The available settings are generally AHCI, SATA, IDE (in that order of preference). If you installed your OS on to the SSD using SATA or IDE, the chances are that AHCI may not work. Also, depending on the OS and your configuration, it may not like it.

In my machines, I have not been able to get AHCI to take on them. Yes, having them as SATA and IDE I am sacrificing some performance. However, the improvements are still enormous.

On one of my machines, I'm running Windows 2000 Server - the thing did not even exist when SATA came along - so even installing the OS clean, it wouldn't even see the SSD! I had to do backflips to get that one installed.

Anyhow, you can try to go in to the BIOS and just flip the setting to AHCI and see what happens when you boot. Either it will work and you're in business, or it will do a blue screen on you and you'll need to flip it back to the setting you currently have. From what I've heard, in general, you need to install your OS on to the system drive in AHCI mode to have the best chance of success.

As far as defragging, you should just be sure that your OS isn't doing it as part of a automatic process it runs. I'm not familiar with Vipre and TuneUp.

 

[axlrose]

So if I haven't done anything with ahci yet, I should probably leave it alone?

Windows 7 isn't going to do anything automatically to mess up my ssd like defraging without my asking right? I would assume.

I'll check with TuneUp I suppose and they should be able to tell me.

Vipre is just my anti-spy/mal etc. It shouldn't do anything like that. I'm just trying to make sure I don't do something stupid to wreck my nice new M4.

 

[rsinj]

You aren't doing anything to wreck your nice new m4...I'm using dual m4's in the rig listed in my signature - Windows 2000 Advanced Server with the BIOS having them in IDE mode.

As far as defrag on Win7, go into Task Scheduler, find the task for ScheduledDefrag and disable it if it isn't already.

 

[jpoos]

AHCI mode will enable native command queuing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Command_Queuing

 

[rsinj]

Here is how to enable your AHCI in Win7 if you're already up and running Win7 without AHCI.

1. Run regedit
2. Go to \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci
3. For the Start entry, modify the value to 0
4. Exit regedit, shutdown Win7, in your BIOS now change to AHCI, reboot