Clevo D901C and AHCI

Is anyone using ahci mode and if so do you notice much difference in speed?

 

Most people, if not everyone, should be using AHCI mode and there should be an increase in speed as your drives are now running in proper SATA mode (which is what they should be in) and not emulated IDE mode. Temps should be lower too.

 

How do you set the AHCI mode? Does it require OS reinstallation if changed?

PL

 

When booting up, press F2 (or whatever accesses the BIOS screen), set AHCI mode there, boot up, install your OS.

Unfortunately if you've installed as IDE you will need to reinstall your OS* (well, XP and Vista). XP needs SATA drivers supplied at install time (floppy or slipstreamed SATA drivers in the XP install disk) and Vista needs to be patched (apparently? there was post today mentioning this) and repaired. Your notebook SHOULD have come in AHCI mode by default, by the way.

*OS, not BIOS. D'oh.

 

Thanks for the replies

 

AHCI may well give a small increase in performance but it's not something that should always be used or expected. We find that running the HDDs in SATA mode is generally more stable than AHCI. AHCI can cause other issues, for example sometimes it won't let you repair a Windows instillation.

I think it's fairer to say that DIY builds or people that know what they are doing can by all means use AHCI if they wish but companies like us do testing and have to use the best comfiguration for our customers. In this case we may sacrifice a 2% HDD performance increase to have a system that's stable and that we can ship to multiple customers.

 

^ You mean "we find that running the HDDs in IDE mode?"

I can see it being more stable for sure, especially using non-Vista OS's. eSATA is nearly nonfunctional in IDE mode though, right? It's easy to switch back to IDE/XP mode once an OS is installed in AHCI/SATA mode, while it's a bigger hassle to go from having an OS installed in IDE mode to enabling AHCI (OS reinstall, with non Vista OSes providing SATA drivers, etc.)

Curious - apparently SATA Controllers, by default, run in IDE emulation mode. My M860TU (Sager) came in Vista/AHCI mode, so I assume this isn't the case for other resellers (Kobalt).

 

I did mean IDE mode sorry, will edit!

I'm going to have to check on this tomorrow now but I was talking about D901C config - 860TU and 570TU are different and we do send these out in AHCI.

 

Oh, duh! Oops, apologies. My eyes only see my own notebook. Interesting; any reason for stability differences?

Thanks for the info; always nice to have a reseller giving official info

 

In AHCI mode mine will sometimes hang at the flashing cursor after post when I restart or switch between os's. I haven't had that happen in normal mode

 

what about raid arrays and AHCI?

 

I remember reading articles about setting up RAID in IDE mode, assuming you have the drivers for it, so it should work. I think it would be a software RAID, and not one controlled by your SATA controller (proper RAID), however, so all emulated, but both IDE and SATA RAIDS can be set up.