Which mode is better for windows 7?

[EricB]

Achi or Sata and why is it better?

 

[KSoD]

I thought ACHI was SATA. ACHI is what SATA Drives use to get full ability from the drives and allow Windows to work properly with them. If I remember the 2 options should be ACHI or IDE in which IDE hampers SATA drives by only allowing them to work within IDE Limitations.

 

[EricB]

my bios options say achi or sata. I'm guessing that either way should be alright? in sata mode I would need to load sata drivers if i was loading xp. in achi mode, I get a bsod trying to load xp. I'm not trying to load xp so i guess that i'm good. right?

 

[KSoD]

You should run in AHCI mode. If it is set for SATA then it just emulates IDE mode. Not sure why some BIOS's are set that way, but that is what my research has found.

 

[EricB]

ok thanks

 

[Lexluethar]

I thought ahci emulated was the same as IDE but it emulated SATA so that the devices could communicate. So if you are using ahci you are not going to be able to take advantage of SATA speeds or hot swappable capabilities because it's just going to run at the 133 speed. That is why you ALWAYS use SATA unless you are on a SATA drive running a system older than Vista (IE XP). Because XP doesn't have the SATA drivers so you have to use ahci which emulates the SATA drivers but is essentially using IDE technology.

That was my understanding of it - I could def be wrong though.

 

[KSoD]

AHCI is the Advanced Host Control Interface. That is the one that allows users to take advantage of the things you mention. XP doesn't have drivers for SATA but it can use AHCI. There is a guide on how to activate it after you install Windows using the IDE interface for systems that have SATA Drives but no SATA Drivers. On the Intel site as well as Wikipedia (yeah I know not a great source of information but this time they are almost dead on with the info) you will see that everything they state says AHCI should be used over IDE. Apparently his BIOS only has the options for SATA or AHCI, in which case the SATA emulates IDE. Kinda messed up if you ask me as that is utterly confusion for those who know. Cause they are the same thing, but for some reason they BIOS maker doesn't distinguish them correctly.

 

[mikesx4911]

I thought ahci emulated was the same as IDE but it emulated SATA so that the devices could communicate. So if you are using ahci you are not going to be able to take advantage of SATA speeds or hot swappable capabilities because it's just going to run at the 133 speed. That is why you ALWAYS use SATA unless you are on a SATA drive running a system older than Vista (IE XP). Because XP doesn't have the SATA drivers so you have to use ahci which emulates the SATA drivers but is essentially using IDE technology.

That was my understanding of it - I could def be wrong though.

That's what I thought as well.