Question .... SATA hard drives, IDE emulation mode vs. AHCI mode

Ok, I have a Gigabyte GA-ex58-UDR3 motherboard, but actually I think
that this question is pretty generic and would apply to almost any
modern motherboard.

I have a SATA hard drive, connected to a SATA port of the Intel ICH10R
chipset [actually, I have two SATA hard drives, and two SATA optical
drives]. The motherboard has a "Gigabyte" IDE/SATA controller on it
(which is actually a JMicron device, which Asus also uses on some
motherboards) to provide an IDE port (and additional SATA ports) but
since I have no IDE devices, that device is disabled entirely in the
BIOS. So it's not part of the question or issue.

Here is the question: The BIOS has two settings for the modes of the
SATA ports (in the Intel ICH10R):

SATA RAID/AHCI Mode (choices are Disabled/Raid/AHCI; set to disabled)
SATA Port 0-3 Native Mode (choice are native/legacy, set to native)

And the system works fine. But it's using "IDE Emulation" to access the
hard drive.

So I set the SATA RAID/AHIC Mode to AHCI .... and the system won't boot.
It crashes during bootup, which causes a loop of continuous resets.

FWIW, I was pretty sure (certain, really) that when I installed this
system (Windows XP SP3, by the way), I used an F6 floppy driver to setup
the system.

So the question: I'd really like the SATA ports operating in AHCI mode.
How do I get there WITHOUT doing a total reinstall of Windows? I
thought I had the necessary SATA driver installed (via the F6 driver I
installed when I first configured the system), but apparently not. So,
again: What do I do to convert the system from accessing the SATA hard
drives via IDE emulation to accessing then in native SATA AHCI mode,
again, without having to reinstall Windows.

???

Barry Watzman wrote:
> Ok, I have a Gigabyte GA-ex58-UDR3 motherboard, but actually I think
> that this question is pretty generic and would apply to almost any
> modern motherboard.
>
> I have a SATA hard drive, connected to a SATA port of the Intel ICH10R
> chipset [actually, I have two SATA hard drives, and two SATA optical
> drives]. The motherboard has a "Gigabyte" IDE/SATA controller on it
> (which is actually a JMicron device, which Asus also uses on some
> motherboards) to provide an IDE port (and additional SATA ports) but
> since I have no IDE devices, that device is disabled entirely in the
> BIOS. So it's not part of the question or issue.
>
> Here is the question: The BIOS has two settings for the modes of the
> SATA ports (in the Intel ICH10R):
>
> SATA RAID/AHCI Mode (choices are Disabled/Raid/AHCI; set to disabled)
> SATA Port 0-3 Native Mode (choice are native/legacy, set to native)
>
> And the system works fine. But it's using "IDE Emulation" to access the
> hard drive.
>
> So I set the SATA RAID/AHIC Mode to AHCI .... and the system won't boot.
> It crashes during bootup, which causes a loop of continuous resets.
>
> FWIW, I was pretty sure (certain, really) that when I installed this
> system (Windows XP SP3, by the way), I used an F6 floppy driver to setup
> the system.
>
> So the question: I'd really like the SATA ports operating in AHCI mode.
> How do I get there WITHOUT doing a total reinstall of Windows? I
> thought I had the necessary SATA driver installed (via the F6 driver I
> installed when I first configured the system), but apparently not. So,
> again: What do I do to convert the system from accessing the SATA hard
> drives via IDE emulation to accessing then in native SATA AHCI mode,
> again, without having to reinstall Windows.
>
> ???

I think you need the IDE emulation when using optical drives. Is there
any reason you don't want to use the IDE emulation? I have another
Gigabyte board and it set up and ran perfectly using the default
settings. The hard drive hit the max rating in the Vista Performance
Rating so I don't think the emulation hurts any.

Barry Watzman <> writes:

> So the question: I'd really like the SATA ports operating in AHCI
> mode. How do I get there WITHOUT doing a total reinstall of Windows?

I followed the instructions at
http://expertester.wordpress.com/200...ci-windows-xp/

However... I only did it once on one system and it worked fine, on an
Asus P5Q Deluxe, which has the ICH10R like yours. However, there are
comments on that page which say that it didn't work for them... So
YMMV.

Oh, and the reason I did it is hot-plugging capability. I have an
external drive in an esata enclosure and with AHCI mode I can just
turn it on and it appears.

On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:00:47 -0500, Barry Watzman
<> wrote:

>Ok, I have a Gigabyte GA-ex58-UDR3 motherboard, but actually I think
>that this question is pretty generic and would apply to almost any
>modern motherboard.
>
>I have a SATA hard drive, connected to a SATA port of the Intel ICH10R
>chipset [actually, I have two SATA hard drives, and two SATA optical
>drives]. The motherboard has a "Gigabyte" IDE/SATA controller on it
>(which is actually a JMicron device, which Asus also uses on some
>motherboards) to provide an IDE port (and additional SATA ports) but
>since I have no IDE devices, that device is disabled entirely in the
>BIOS. So it's not part of the question or issue.
>
>Here is the question: The BIOS has two settings for the modes of the
>SATA ports (in the Intel ICH10R):
>
>SATA RAID/AHCI Mode (choices are Disabled/Raid/AHCI; set to disabled)
>SATA Port 0-3 Native Mode (choice are native/legacy, set to native)
>
>And the system works fine. But it's using "IDE Emulation" to access the
>hard drive.
>
>So I set the SATA RAID/AHIC Mode to AHCI .... and the system won't boot.
> It crashes during bootup, which causes a loop of continuous resets.
>
>FWIW, I was pretty sure (certain, really) that when I installed this
>system (Windows XP SP3, by the way), I used an F6 floppy driver to setup
>the system.
>
>So the question: I'd really like the SATA ports operating in AHCI mode.
> How do I get there WITHOUT doing a total reinstall of Windows? I
>thought I had the necessary SATA driver installed (via the F6 driver I
>installed when I first configured the system), but apparently not. So,
>again: What do I do to convert the system from accessing the SATA hard
>drives via IDE emulation to accessing then in native SATA AHCI mode,
>again, without having to reinstall Windows.

1. Enable GigabyteSATA2 interface in bios setup.
2. Boot to XP and install JMicron SATA driver.
3. Move XP drive to GigabyteSATA2 connector.
4. Switch ICH10R mode to AHCI in bios setup, and check Hard Disk Boot
Priority that the XP drive is the boot drive.
5. Boot to XP and install Intel AHCI driver.
6. Move XP drive back to ICH10R connector.
7. Disable GigabyteSATA2 interface in bio setup.
8. Boot to XP in AHCI mode.

>
>???

"andy" <> wrote in message
news:...
> On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:00:47 -0500, Barry Watzman
> <> wrote:
>
>>Ok, I have a Gigabyte GA-ex58-UDR3 motherboard, but actually I think
>>that this question is pretty generic and would apply to almost any
>>modern motherboard.
>>
>>I have a SATA hard drive, connected to a SATA port of the Intel ICH10R
>>chipset [actually, I have two SATA hard drives, and two SATA optical
>>drives]. The motherboard has a "Gigabyte" IDE/SATA controller on it
>>(which is actually a JMicron device, which Asus also uses on some
>>motherboards) to provide an IDE port (and additional SATA ports) but
>>since I have no IDE devices, that device is disabled entirely in the
>>BIOS. So it's not part of the question or issue.
>>
>>Here is the question: The BIOS has two settings for the modes of the
>>SATA ports (in the Intel ICH10R):
>>
>>SATA RAID/AHCI Mode (choices are Disabled/Raid/AHCI; set to disabled)
>>SATA Port 0-3 Native Mode (choice are native/legacy, set to native)
>>
>>And the system works fine. But it's using "IDE Emulation" to access the
>>hard drive.
>>
>>So I set the SATA RAID/AHIC Mode to AHCI .... and the system won't boot.
>> It crashes during bootup, which causes a loop of continuous resets.
>>
>>FWIW, I was pretty sure (certain, really) that when I installed this
>>system (Windows XP SP3, by the way), I used an F6 floppy driver to setup
>>the system.
>>
>>So the question: I'd really like the SATA ports operating in AHCI mode.
>> How do I get there WITHOUT doing a total reinstall of Windows? I
>>thought I had the necessary SATA driver installed (via the F6 driver I
>>installed when I first configured the system), but apparently not. So,
>>again: What do I do to convert the system from accessing the SATA hard
>>drives via IDE emulation to accessing then in native SATA AHCI mode,
>>again, without having to reinstall Windows.
>
> 1. Enable GigabyteSATA2 interface in bios setup.
> 2. Boot to XP and install JMicron SATA driver.
> 3. Move XP drive to GigabyteSATA2 connector.
> 4. Switch ICH10R mode to AHCI in bios setup, and check Hard Disk Boot
> Priority that the XP drive is the boot drive.
> 5. Boot to XP and install Intel AHCI driver.
> 6. Move XP drive back to ICH10R connector.
> 7. Disable GigabyteSATA2 interface in bio setup.
> 8. Boot to XP in AHCI mode.

That should work. Where most go wrong (including me) on ICH10R
based mobos is to install the wrong ICH10R driver at F6 during the
initial XP installation. The one that doesn't work is labelled only
ICH10R. The one that does work is further down in the list and (AFAIR)
includes ICH8 & 9R in the name. Couldn't even get XP installed in
AHCI mode, let alone RAID on a P6T until I discovered this some
hours later via a lot of googling. Thanks, for that, Intel..
HTH,
--
Rob