ACHI Enabled?

[idata]

Hi, I'm new to the SSD scene and I have a few quetions I hope people here can help with.

I know you need to have ACHI enabled in the BIOS, but as I understand it, RAID automatically has ACHI enabled, and since I wanted a RAID drive as my second drive, I set it to RAID.

In WIndows 7, the SSD appears to be fine, running very fast. However, in device manager, under 'IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers' it lists only the following:

ATA Channel 0

ATA Channel 1

Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

Through reading these forums, I am under the impression that an ACHI driver should be mentioned under here somewhere.

Under 'Storage Controllers' the following is displayed:

Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO/5 Series/3400 Series SATA RAID Controller

I have installed the Intel Rapid Storage Tech software, but still ACHI is not mentioned.

Have I missed something here? Should I have not set the bios to RAID? Is there a driver I am missing? or is everything correct and I'm being a little paranoid?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

Using 80GB X25-M in Windows 7 on a Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 motherboard.

Message was edited by: Skyphox

[DZand]

RAID and AHCI are different SATA Modes and RAID systems do not automaticly support AHCI.

If you really want to run your SSD in AHCI Mode and to get benefit of the automatic Trim support, you should disable the RAID Mode of the SATA Controllers, where the SSD is connected.

If you want to stick with your current hardware configuration and BIOS settings, you will nevertheless have the option to prevent a long term lost of your SSD performance by installing the Intel SSD Toolbox and running the Optimizer once a week.

[idata]

Thanks for the reply! Sorry for my dyslexic moment and putting ACHI instead of AHCI.

Ok, so am I right in understanding you in that the only benefit AHCI gives is the availability of the auto TRIM function? And that I am not missing out on any speed increases by having the SATA set to RAID?

[DZand]

Skyphox schrieb:

Ok, so am I right in understanding you in that the only benefit AHCI gives is the availability of the auto TRIM function? And that I am not missing out on any speed increases by having the SATA set to RAID?

All depends on your specific hardware configuration, the location of your OS and your preferences of the computer tasks.

An AHCI system has a better performance than a SATA system, which is running in IDE Mode, but a RAID0 array will give you much more performance than any non-RAID system running in IDE or AHCI Mode, but you will only get the full benefit, if your OS is within the RAID.

By the way: It doesn't make much sense to create a RAID consisting of just a single hdd. Only a RAID0 array will boost the performance, but there are 2 hdd's minimum required for such array.

[idata]

The SSD is my main HD with the OS on it. I then have 2x 250gig Western Digital drives in RAID0 for my second drive, for putting less important game/programs on... so as to not eat up my SSD space too quickly. That is the only reason I went for the RAID option in the BIOS.

But I'm starting to get the impression that really I should have forgone the RAID array on the second drive in favour of the AHCI mode in the BIOS. But it still seems to be very fast in this mode, I just don't have the automatic TRIM function. (Which I can live with)

I am just interested in knowing if the single drive would get a speed boost if I switched to AHCI only. I'm getting the impression that speed wise, a single drive in AHCI or RAID mode will run exactly the same speed in both.