AHCI ??

[Godzilla]

i just bought an OCZ Agility2 3.5" 120gb SSD. I was wondering if i am supposed to enable AHCI in the BIOS before installing windows 7 ultimate 64-bit onto it?

I found this on the OCZ website http://www.ocztechnology.com/res_old/images/Configuring-and-Setting-Up-SSDs.pdf

i quote:-

"AHCI is not official supported on OCZ SSDs and may under some circumstances affect performance,
specifically during windows installation. Enabling AHCI can result in higher performance in synthetic
benchmarks for SSDs and HDDs alike, but can cause hang-ups and intermittent freezes in SSDs since it
allows multiple access requests to compete for a drive that is not made to address re-ordering of
commands in the queue. We recommend AHCI is set to disabled in both Windows and in the BIOS.
Native Command Queuing greatly increases the performance of standard rotational drives but it has no
bearing on SSDs."

Now correct me if i'm wrong, but i thought AHCI had to be enabled on SSDs so that TRIM would work? :confused:

Any help greatly appreciated.

[Trap05]

Yes by all means use AHCI

[Mr Alpha]

Yes, you'll definitely want AHCI enabled. If you look at the date of that guide you'll see that it is several years old, and by now completely out of date.

[Jmtyra]

/agreed, AHCI is the only way to go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

[Godzilla]

Thanks guys.

Another thing, I still want to keep using my 2 x 1tb drives as storage drives. Will AHCI mess with these or does it only affect the SSD boot drive?

Will I also need to update the BIOS? (something I really don't feel comfortable doing)

[Mr Alpha]

AHCI will affect all drives but it doesn't make any difference to the storage drives whether your in AHCI or IDE mode.

[Godzilla]

AHCI will affect all drives but it doesn't make any difference to the storage drives whether your in AHCI or IDE mode.

Oh right. Even if I still have previous data i want to keep on them?

[Jmtyra]

Correct. Since you're not relying on those drives to boot the system, you'll be fine. The first time you boot into windows, it'll give you the generic "would you like to reboot because you plugged in something new" error, but you can ignore it. Basically the computer will think you unplugged both of those HDDs and plugged them in "differently".

As long as it's not your OS/Boot drive, you're gravy. :)

[Mr Alpha]

Oh right. Even if I still have previous data i want to keep on them?Even then. The only time you have trouble with switching from IDE to AHCI mode is if you have a previous windows installation that doesn't know to load the AHCI drivers. The data don't know or care.

[Godzilla]

oh right thanks.

Back to my other point, do i have to upgrade the BIOS? which i'm not comfortable doing?

[Mr Alpha]

oh right thanks.

Back to my other point, do i have to upgrade the BIOS? which i'm not comfortable doing?Looking through the fixes provided in the newer BIOSes the seem mainly to deal with adding support for new CPUs, fixing memory incompatibilities, and fixing OC instability issues. Nothing realted to storage or SSD (besides one dealing with add-in RAID cards, which I assume your not planning on doing). There should be no reason to update the BIOS.

[Godzilla]

Looking through the fixes provided in the newer BIOSes the seem mainly to deal with adding support for new CPUs, fixing memory incompatibilities, and fixing OC instability issues. Nothing realted to storage or SSD (besides one dealing with add-in RAID cards, which I assume your not planning on doing). There should be no reason to update the BIOS.

Nah i'm not touching RAID for now ;) thanks!