Should I enable AHCI for my new SSD HDD?

[petal]

I recently upgraded my Scope-machine with a Samsung 840 pro HDD. and are getting close to having everything installed and up and running perfectly again (my God it takes forever to get there...)

To be honest I'm not really impressed by the supposed better performance of my new SDD, so I ran the Magician program, which seems to insist that I should enable AHCI for best performance.

Now haveing spend days already to get to the point where I am now, I'd like to have the planetZ crowd of pc wizards to recommend I enable AHCI before I actually do it.

I intend to use this guide:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=313676

Is that the way to do it or is there a "simpler" way to enable AHCI after having installed Windows 7 in non-AHCI-mode?

Cheers,
Thomas

[petal]

Is it really true?

No SSD wizards present?

Is AHCI a good or a bad thing on a SCOPE tuned pc or am I better off with IDE?

[jksuperstar]

AHCI is a definite YES for SSD drives, and any SATA drive, really.

You miss command queuing (NCQ) or possibly TRIM without it. NCQ is a huge performance boost and less taxing on the CPU, as it allows the device to queue commands, rather than queuing them up in the OS (or causing stalls). And the device can reorder commands as it sees fit for best performance. You'll see double write performance typically with AHCI over IDE, with read performance gains depending on the size of transfers.

I don't think there is ANY reason to turn off AHCI, as it's a SATA interface thing, and has nothing to do with the rest of the system. The switch is only there if a device that is "older" happens to be buggy with AHCI enabled.

Maybe you are thinking of the old issues with ACPI? (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface). I've never heard of issues with AHCI (Advanced Host Control Interface), especially with it interfering with other system devices, like audio.

[petal]

Yes, I was thinking of ACPI, and although I knew it wasn't the same thing, the procedure I have to go through to enable AHCI now, made me wanna be sure I wanted AHCI before enabling it.

Thank you very much for your clear answer!

[jksuperstar]

It sounds like you jsut have to set a bit in the Registry, and then reboot and change your BIOS. Which also seems reversible if it doesn't work out. Good luck anyway

[petal]

That is true. But I have just litterally spend days reinstalling everything. I mean reinstalling all your scope stuff (I have both an XITE and a PCI system running) and all the other audio software to go with it, is such a pain, that I just couldn't bear the thought of possibly having to start all over again, if I fucked something up with this AHCI-stuff.

Maybe I'm being over precautious - Time will tell

[Polarity]

and just doing a backup image of the OS disk?

I have various of them, and will do an updated one before doing this procedure on my new system.
Actually I was myself interested in this AHCI fix (and waiting for some expert's reply) because I had the same issue with my previous Q6600 mobo.
I installed the AHCI drivers that came with the P965 mobo but never got them work: same BSOD like you if loading Windows with AHCI mode on in the bios.
Had to use IDE for all this time.
Probably I just missed the registry modification for making it work.
Because I moved the old Win7 installation to the new mobo and cpu the issue remained:
with AHCI mode activated in bios Windows doesn't start.

Have a backup image and try the fix: if it doesn't work... just restore the image backup!
it's just a matter or 20 minutes at maximum.

[petal]

OK, I went ahead and created an image of my installation and then I enabled AHCI using the procedure described in the link above.

Everything went smoothly and I'm now getting the ssd-test results that I was expecting.
In other words - it works and my system feels faster and more responsive now!

Thanks for the help guys!

[Polarity]

Thanks to you for the link to how to do this procedure in the right way
and for being the guinea pig for it!!
you were quicker than me.
I'll do it during the weekend maybe (I don't have yet an SSD in my DAW pc)
so not in a hurry.

cheers

[jksuperstar]

Great to hear!

[guppy]

For those who use Samplitude, I've read that Samplitude doesn't like ahci mode, because it makes the computer hangs.
Maybe Samplitude X solved the problem.

[Polarity]

all fine, the fix worked also for my new system.
now AHCI mode is activated.
no problems at all with Cubase and Wavelab.

[dawman]

As long as you still get TRIM.......

Ankyu

[petal]

I'm all trimmed up, thank you very much!