X25-M G2 80GB, Steam games freeze with AHCI mode enabled.

[idata]

I have an Intel X25-M G2 80gb SSD, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. I recently enabled AHCI through Windows using the steps in this guide. http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/ http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/

Everything has sped up, and up until now, I wasn't having any problems, so I assumed I had done it properly. Then, I went to fire up GTA IV, which I run through Steam, and it froze before I could even get into the game. I had to CTRL + ALT +DLT to get out of the game.

Remember, I enabled AHCI after the Windows installtion. I had heard that it could be problematic, but up until now, everything had been going smoothly.

Any suggestions?

[idata]

You have two SATA controllers on your motherboard. From looking at the this motherboard's manual, Sata Raid/AHCI is the ICH10R SATA ports, and you'll want to use these ones in AHCI mode. Make sure you're plugged into one of the ICH SATA ports(the block of six SATA connectors), preferably SATA 0.

[idata]

And no, I didn't crib off of Ozz's excellent answer, just a few minutes late...

[idata]

So I went in and changed a few said things. Put my Intel Drive to the yellow SATA Port 0, disabled Onboard SATA/IDE device, put the SATA Raid/AHCI mode to AHCI. I also updated my bios to F12.

So now, I can boot into windows with AHCI mode on, and I can watch videos and play games, but there is still a problem.

Both of my drives (my Intel X25-M 80gb and my Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB) show up as removable devices.

Is there an explanation and a fix for this?

[idata]

Good to hear you seem to have resolved your issues.

Regarding the presence of removable devices, that part of the featureset of AHCI, i.e. it's not a problem per se.

Having not extensively used Win 7 myself, you might be able to hide certain devices from the list, so as to avoid accidentally attempting to remove the wrong drive; I don't think windows will let you remove itself anyway. However, the 1TB WD drive would probably remove without issue if there's no system partition or programs in use that happen to reside on that drive.