Question on SSD setup

knight_40k · March 27, 2013

So I'm fairly new to the SSD game, I recently added a Samsung 830 to my main rig and I've got a couple Crucial M4s in others. Now I read somewhere that you want to set your BIOS to AHCI mode to run SSD instead of IDE (or something). When I first got my SSD I remember trying to change that but when I changed it to ACHI, Windows wouldn't boot. Is this something that needs to be done on a fresh install? I'm using Win 7 Pro 64. Maybe updating BIOS would help?

Anyways, unrelated to this I'm just about to start a new build but I'm asking now because I plan to use the 830 in the new build. I'm also wondering what is the benefit of AHCI over the other and can I change this on my other systems that are only using HDDs?

EChondo · March 27, 2013

Is this something that needs to be done on a fresh install?

Yup. A BIOS update will not help, you either have to do it from the beginning before installing the OS, or do a registry hack in Windows, which I would advise against doing.

AHCI is for new Operating Systems, IDE is for the older OSs like XP and below.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/AHCI_vs_IDE

knight_40k · March 27, 2013

Is this something that needs to be done on a fresh install?

Yup. A BIOS update will not help, you either have to do it from the beginning before installing the OS, or do a registry hack in Windows, which I would advise against doing.

AHCI is for new Operating Systems, IDE is for the older OSs like XP and below.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/AHCI_vs_IDE

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll give it a go once I start my build.