AHCI vs regular Native IDE

eLPuSHeR · 25 Aug 2015

Hello.

I feel that setting your SATA harddisks to AHCI mode can be mandatory when you have a SSD drive. Doing some benchmarks on my Intel i7 shows that my SSD it's 50% slower running under IDE. Besides I am not sure but does IDE support TRIM commands?

But what about when you only have mechanical harddisks? Is it really better?

What about when your chipset is AMD? Do they have a proper AHCI implementation too? AHCI is an Intel thing right?

Should I go with AHCI always regardless having SSD drive(s) or not?

Opinions are welcome.

fredc · 25 Aug 2015

I have used both and have been on many forums and specialty forums like "Fernando's ACHI and Raid" specific forums and i think having Intels "Rapid storage technology drivers" is when you run in ACHI mode.

I have not noticed a performance difference myself but i only have one hard drive , with "Raid" configurations there is noticeable performance gains.

I do not know about how an AMD setup compares or what it entails.

http://www.win-raid.com/forum.php

Night Hawk · 25 Aug 2015

I have been wondering here as I was in the bios setup on one of the two desktops where a pair well actually a mix of a single Sata II drive being the original for the single drive case as well as a larger Sata 3 drive just added in are presently running on the Native IDE setting there. A quick restart and change of setting should reveal anything noticeable. Both desktops here as well as an HP laptop have AMD chipsets.

And the word is: "Your pc ran into a problem! Boot device inaccessible. We will ...." followed by me simply pressing the reset button on the case itself! NADA for mechanical drives! And RAID is strictly for arrays of multiple drives. Previously had two identical storage drives in a SCSI type of array where both drives are seen as separate drives not as mirrors.

Maggelan · 25 Aug 2015

You can't change from IDE to AHCI without doing a reinstall, That is part in parcel to do with how file systems are set up and accessed I believe..feel free to correct that but that's part of it.

AHCI is a standard for the industry regardless of who came up with it.

Intel and AMD share far more than you think it would seem and partner on many projects to bring about changes, Do people honestly think these changes come about in a closed room with no talking to others in the industry?

Intel or AMD could not implement anything without consulting others, They can influence change for the better but they more often than not work together behind the scenes especially for industry standards.

Night Hawk · 25 Aug 2015

When going over the two HHEY_LOCAL_MACHINE values one isn't even found being the "MSahci" you previously would modify to change from 1 to 0. The other "pciide" value is still there however in the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>CurrentControlSet>Services>" hive. With 7 and other previous versions you would make the change of values there before restarting and resaving the existing bios configuration as Windows would then install the necessary drivers before you made the change of setting in the bios setup.

Rudy Mas · 25 Aug 2015

If you want to change IDE to AHCI in windows 10, without a clean install, do the following steps:

Open Command Prompt (Admin)
type: bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal
Restart PC and go into you BIOS -> Set IDE to AHCI
Windows 10 will start if Safe Mode
Open Command Prompt (Admin)
type: bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot
Restart and Windows 10 should load with AHCI enabled now

Until now, I had a 100% succes rate with this, but in the case Windows 10 wouldn't start, go back into your BIOS and set AHCI to IDE.

Night Hawk · 25 Aug 2015

Gave that a try and this is what comes up in the admin command prompt.

AHCI vs regular Native IDE-native-ide-ahci-w10.jpg

Apparently you need to tweak the expression of the command per system in order to see i work.

him · 25 Aug 2015

I tried to set ACHI for my SSD (and other HDD, SDD) before installing Win 10. Apparently, some SSD don't support AHCI? Or may be the firmware on my SSD is old. In either case, IDE is working fine enough. Again, I have AMD chipset, so not sure if that plays any role.

logicearth · 25 Aug 2015

AHCI has nothing to do with the Drives (HDD or SSD) it has to do with the SATA controller and how it communicates with the host system. A SATA drive does not care how the system is setup (AHCI or Legacy IDE), the SATA controller simply translate the older Legacy IDE to the respective SATA commands for the drive. AHCI simply removes that need for translating as well as expand the feature set that SATA supports.

The purpose of the Legacy IDE mode is because older systems (Windows XP) don't have support for SATA or AHCI.

Rudy Mas · 25 Aug 2015

Night Hawk said:

Gave that a try and this is what comes up in the admin command prompt.

Apparently you need to tweak the expression of the command per system in order to see i work.

Sorry, my mistake! That's what happens if you type it from memory instead of checking it first.

[current] has to be {current} [] => {}

Sorry for this!