SSD and SATA fake-RAID combo - no AHCI

[matze2ooo]

Hello everyone

I am using a Samsung SSD 830 Series disk (latest firmware) which is connected to the first SATA II port on my computer (Fujitsu Celsius M460). The ports two to four are each connected to a 1TB SATA disks which are configured as a RAID 5 device using fake-raid. (Intel ICH9R)

Samsung Magician (running latest version 4.0) says: AHCI mode is deactivated and required for highest SSD performance. Checking the BIOS settings it seems to be enabled, also the option is grayed out (due to the fact that RAID is enabled)

Also the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci\Start is set to "0".

So what can I do to fully leverage the SSD performance? Can fake-RAID and AHCI mode be used at the same time?

Thanks for your replies.

 

[matze2ooo]

Forgot to mention that I am running Windows 7 Enterprise x64....

 

[Dereck47]

That's strange. AHCI is a subset of RAID; so if you have SATA ports 1 thru 4 in RAID mode your SSD should automatically default to AHCI mode since it is not part of a RAID array.

Download and open AS-SSD benchmark software. No need to run the actual benchmark; just post what is displayed right above the check box that says "Seq".

 

[Dereck47]

Here are AHCI drivers for your system: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=20110

I found those drivers by the information I got from this site:
http://www.driveridentifier.com/scan/driver_file_detail.php?inf_file_id=1079484&md5=d0b82c94026b38e2606b287bc0d708c1&scanid=C444CB71FA444C91B798D01177C2ABCC&item_id=464211229&hardware_id=PCI%5CVEN_8086%26DEV_2922%26CC_0106

 

[matze2ooo]

Thanks for your reply. Here is the result of my benchmark. I haven't updated the driver to the suggested version yet. Are the values fine?

 

[popatim]

Typicall when you use onboard raid all the ports of that type on the controller chip will be placed in raid mode. For example my motherbd has 4 sata3 ports and 4 sata2 ports. when I enable raid for sata 3 it puts all the sata3 ports into raid mode alnd leaves sata2 in whatever mode I had them. Your drive shoud still work fine as a single drive on the raid controller.

Please note that you will not see the SSD's full speed simply because your M460 does not have sata3 ports, only sata2.

 

[popatim]

Yes the values you see are fine for your system.

 

[matze2ooo]

Okay this implies that SSD magician is reporting wrong information.

 

[Dereck47]

Okay this implies that SSD magician is reporting wrong information.

Yes, I believe so. "iaStor" indicates that you are in AHCI mode. If you were in IDE mode it would say "pciide".