SSD AHCI Mode Help?

[Brainiac777]

Hello, I am planning to buy a Crucial M4 SSD 256GB SSD and I have a HP Dv7 1245ca and it might support TRIM, it might not...but anyway, i entered the BIOS and there isn't a SATA section, there is no way to change it. I've checked online and it said that HP BIOS does't support changing to AHCI. Many people want to modify the BIOS but recommend against it. Is there anyway to set the SATA port to AHCI mode using any other method? I have 2 HDD bays in the laptop so yea... In Device Manager, under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, it has ATA channel 0-5 and Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller, and Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller. Please help.

[Dragonstongue]

you may be out of luck, or at least in the sence that, if using windows 7 or other windows installs, you can force AHCI HOWEVER you need to be able to go into bios to enable the AHCI queing so the bios/os understand what each other are doing, or you could have a no boot issue. I will not be responsible if that happens to you.

I know some SSD now can use TRIM without be told to do so as it is enabled by default on the drive itself, I do not recall what drives are "native" TRIM BGC and such though.

Anyways, here is a link to show how to enable/check/force TRIM. Also while you are at it, make sure defrag, superfetch, prefetch, indexing and such ARE NOT enabled for the SSD, they don`t need it, and overtime it can hurt the performance or lifetime of most any SSD in question, sometimes drastically.

How to Enable/Check TRIM/AHCI in Windows 7 - The Corsair Support Forums this is link as promised, again, I am not responsible if this borks anything, do make sure you have OS backups, newest bios/drivers and such, as well as newest firmware for the drive and such, tc and best of luck..

[sswilson]

Originally Posted by Dragonstongue

you may be out of luck, or at least in the sence that, if using windows 7 or other windows installs, you can force AHCI HOWEVER you need to be able to go into bios to enable the AHCI queing so the bios/os understand what each other are doing, or you could have a no boot issue. I will not be responsible if that happens to you.

I know some SSD now can use TRIM without be told to do so as it is enabled by default on the drive itself, I do not recall what drives are "native" TRIM BGC and such though.

Anyways, here is a link to show how to enable/check/force TRIM. Also while you are at it, make sure defrag, superfetch, prefetch, indexing and such ARE NOT enabled for the SSD, they don`t need it, and overtime it can hurt the performance or lifetime of most any SSD in question, sometimes drastically.

How to Enable/Check TRIM/AHCI in Windows 7 - The Corsair Support Forums this is link as promised, again, I am not responsible if this borks anything, do make sure you have OS backups, newest bios/drivers and such, as well as newest firmware for the drive and such, tc and best of luck..

I'm pretty sure that the process you've linked to only reports back as to whether or not windows is setup to process trim commands. In order to do trim you must have all three of the following - a compatble SSD, AHCI set in bios, and a Trim capable OS. No amount of OS tweaking is going to be able to overcome the inability to set AHCI in the bios, what the link you provided allows for is to enable AHCI in windows if it was initially installed without AHCI selected.

As far as the OP goes... hopefully AKG will chime in here, but I suspect you're just going to have to rely on the SSD's internal garbage cleaning function rather than trim.

[MARSTG]

if you buy Crucial M4 you don't have to care about the lack of TRIM, that drive is good enough on it's own. TRIM is good for Sandforce based drives, your Crucial will be fine on its own.

[AkG]

Simplest easy way to see what mode you are in....download as-ssd. Run it. It will ping the drive and the drivers and show it under the model name (but above the green or red offset info in the left corner area). IF it comes back and says "iaStor.sys" your have Intel RST drivers (ie AHCI drivers by Intel). IF it comes back "msachi" you are in AHCI mode running MS ahci drivers. IF it comes back with "intelide" or "XXXide" you are in IDE mode. If you are in IDE mode and you cant hard set it in the BIOS (AND change it in windows to ahci drivers)...trim is not an option.

Honestly, it doesnt really matter all that much. The M4 has excellent idle time garbage collection and kicks serious ass. I use one in my older AMD rig. That and the fact your controller is going to bottleneck loooong before your SSD does means ahci vs ide mode performance issues are also not much to worry about. Use the M4 and enjoy.