TM2-Megatron
09-09-07, 03:44 AM
Basically I'm going to be getting a new system early next week (first one in a while), and although I've done quite a bit of reading on SATA over the last week I do have a few lingering questions. And most of hte users on these boards seem to have had considerably more experience with newer hardware than I have, so this seemed a good place to ask. My last PC didn't have SATA, so I never really had any need to have answers to my current questions, so bear with me if some of that have been "done to death", as it were. I've looked through the SATA 101 thread stickied to the top of this forum, but I didn't find anything that really answered my questions.
My new system will have an Asus P5K-E/WiFi-AP motherboard, which uses the Intel ICH9R southbridge and has 6 SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports. It also uses a JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller which provides two eSATA 3.0 Gb/s ports (both of which are on the rear panel) and a regular Ultra DMA connector for PATA devices.
Ideally, I'd like to set both the ICH9R and JMicron SATA controllers to AHCI mode as opposed to IDE-emulation... and everything I've read indicates that this needs to be done prior to installing Windows XP. Primarily, I have two questions related to this issue:
1. I'm planning to use nLite to make a new XP CD and slipstream AHCI drivers for both the ICH9R and JMicron controllers... however, I have the option of including the RAID drivers for both as well. Should I include bother doing this... will Windows know which one to use based on what I've set the controllers to in the BIOS, or will this simply confuse the installation process?
2. I'm going to be connecting two optical drives to the PATA connector of the JMicron controller... a Lite-On SHM-165H6S DVD burner as primary and Lite-On SOHC-5235K combo as slave. What I'm wondering about this is will setting the JMicron controller to AHCI impact the functionality of devices connected to its PATA port? Based on the motherboard's manual, the BIOS doesn't distinguish between these two ports, and simply gives the option to set the JMicron controller to [IDE], [AHCI], or [RAID]. Personally, I can't see how a Ultra DMA port could function in AHCI mode, so up to now I've assumed that the BIOS setting applies only to the eSATA ports and leaves the PATA alone... though I'd appreciate it if someone could confirm that.
My new system will have an Asus P5K-E/WiFi-AP motherboard, which uses the Intel ICH9R southbridge and has 6 SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports. It also uses a JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller which provides two eSATA 3.0 Gb/s ports (both of which are on the rear panel) and a regular Ultra DMA connector for PATA devices.
Ideally, I'd like to set both the ICH9R and JMicron SATA controllers to AHCI mode as opposed to IDE-emulation... and everything I've read indicates that this needs to be done prior to installing Windows XP. Primarily, I have two questions related to this issue:
1. I'm planning to use nLite to make a new XP CD and slipstream AHCI drivers for both the ICH9R and JMicron controllers... however, I have the option of including the RAID drivers for both as well. Should I include bother doing this... will Windows know which one to use based on what I've set the controllers to in the BIOS, or will this simply confuse the installation process?
2. I'm going to be connecting two optical drives to the PATA connector of the JMicron controller... a Lite-On SHM-165H6S DVD burner as primary and Lite-On SOHC-5235K combo as slave. What I'm wondering about this is will setting the JMicron controller to AHCI impact the functionality of devices connected to its PATA port? Based on the motherboard's manual, the BIOS doesn't distinguish between these two ports, and simply gives the option to set the JMicron controller to [IDE], [AHCI], or [RAID]. Personally, I can't see how a Ultra DMA port could function in AHCI mode, so up to now I've assumed that the BIOS setting applies only to the eSATA ports and leaves the PATA alone... though I'd appreciate it if someone could confirm that.