AHCI or ATA on M1330 - How to tell

Hi all

I'm running Win2K8 Server x64 on my M1330. All fixed up with Vista x64 patches and it works a treat. When I installed 2K8 though, I had trouble installing the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM). I attempted the install at the beginning of the 2K8 install (using the 'Load Driver' option on one of the early Installation pages). Seemed to fail miserably, after installing the IMSM driver all my existing partitions disappeared, along with the entire disk!

I tried the 2K8 install again but omitted the IMSM install. Everything worked fine.

Now, my BIOS reports that it is running in AHCI mode (as it was before installing 2K8), but how can this be if I have not explicitly installed the IMSM drivers?

So, the question is, how do I determine the mode in which my HDD is operating? I would not normally care but Dell has just released a new official IMSM update and I don't know if I am going to break stuff by installing it.

All help and guidance appreciated.

Thx
J.

 

By Default its set to run in AHCI mode unless you have explicitly turned off in BIOS and AFAIK no os can change the setting of BIOS ... so what OS sees and uses is entirely depended upon BIOS .