No AHCI on SATA3_5 990FX Fatal1ty Killer

[KiwiSteve]

It was time to clean my case/mobo then test some cheap SSDs in RAID 0. My boot drive was on SATA3_3 and performed well but I had to move it to put the 3 Intel 520s in ports 1-3. My WD hard drive was already in port 4 so I left it there and put my boot drive in port 5. Bad move, I'd forgotten that port 5 is shared with e-sata. My PC booted up well enough and performance was OK but sequential read/write on the boot disk was way down. Samsung Magician tells me that AHCI is deactivated.

OK, I swapped the WD and Samsung 840 Pro over so the WD is on port 5, set the 840 Pro as Boot#1 on port 4 and started the PC but Windows Boot Manager is confused and won't use it. I've tried various things; Combined Mode, e-SATA enabled and so on. I even tried switching to RAID mode and having the 840 Pro as a single disk array, but no go. The PC will only boot with the 840 Pro in port 5.

[parsec]

Re: No AHCI on SATA3_5 990FX Fatal1ty Killer

Have you tried clearing the CMOS/BIOS after moving the 840 Pro to port 5?

I don't think that port 5 being shared with the eSATA port would interfere with a drive on port 5, assuming nothing is connected to the eSATA port.

Since an eSATA port should support hot swapping, disconnecting and connecting drives while the PC is running, AHCI mode is required, since it supports hot swapping.

That tells me that port 5 might have been set to IDE mode. You mentioned trying RAID mode, which will confuse the Magician software and tell you AHCI is not active, but that is false if you are using RAID mode.

I have a feeling that you installed Windows on the 840 with your WD drive in the PC, is that correct? If so, Windows put the boot partition on the WD drive, an annoying habit of Windows.

Port 5 is somehow isolated from the other SATA ports, and given how AMD's SATA configuration allows multiple SATA modes to be active on specific ports and not on others, that makes sense.

Oh, and you can't just change to RAID mode when Windows was installed in AHCI or other mode. The PC won't boot.

Try to review your SATA port configuration, and be sure to clear the BIOS when moving drives around.

[KiwiSteve]

Re: No AHCI on SATA3_5 990FX Fatal1ty Killer

Thanks for the info, Parsec.

The PC is running with the 840 Pro in Port 5 and the other 4 physical disks in RAID on ports 1-4. I was quite surprised that it allowed this. The RAID Controller sees the 3 Intel 520s as a RAID 0 array and the WD as a single disk array and doesn't see the 840 Pro at all. Interestingly the 3 disk stripe doesn't perform very well either, which may be because the 840 Pro is "crippled" or it may be something else.

I'll look into it further after work tonight. Certainly, I'll do a clear CMOS and start from scratch.

When I installed windows I cloned the 840 Pro from my previous boot drive, which wasn't the WD, it was another, older SSD. I don't remember if the WD was connected, when the original Windows install was done, though. I'll have a look at its partitions.

[KiwiSteve]

Re: No AHCI on SATA3_5 990FX Fatal1ty Killer

After several attempts, including clearing CMOS, I have not solved the problem. SATA3_5 is the only place my 840 Pro will boot from. It will not boot from there if the RAID ROM is enabled but it will if I configure SATA as RAID0. Odd?

I checked the WD hard drive; 1 partition to the full capacity of the drive. Windows has not created a boot partition on it. At this stage I am contemplating going back to basics with a fresh install of Windows 8.1 with just the 840 Pro in port 1 after resetting the main board to default/AHCI; no other drives connected. After reinstalling I will add drives logically.

Alternatively, fork out for a Plextor M.2 PCI SSD and use that as the boot drive, leaving the SATA ports for storage configuration.

[parsec]

Re: No AHCI on SATA3_5 990FX Fatal1ty Killer

I know what the situation is with SATA port 5 and your SSD.

IF I can trust the manual for your board's current BIOS options, the SATA3_5 port can be separated from the other SATA ports, and is by default, with the SATA IDE Combined Mode option enabled. If you disable the SATA IDE Combined Mode option, then the SATA3_5 port will be the same as the other SATA ports, which are now in RAID mode.

Using the SATA IDE combined mode isolates the drive on port 5 from the other ports, which is why the SSD is not seen by the RAID controller. The name SATA IDE Combined makes sense, some ports are in SATA mode (AHCI or RAID), the other in IDE mode.

The performance of your SSD was reduced because SATA port 5 was operating in IDE mode, no AHCI as the Magician software detected.

If you changed the SATA mode to AHCI, and put the SSD in say port 4, I bet the PC would boot.

With the SATA mode set to RAID, with the SSD in port 5, if you disable SATA IDE Combined mode, I bet the PC will not boot.

You mentioned you wanted to try a RAID 0 array of SSDs, but did you install Windows originally in the drive you cloned from (to the SSD) in RAID mode, and had the SATA mode set to RAID when you cloned to the SSD? That is, unless the AMD RAID allows you to change to RAID on the fly, without a RAID driver installed on the OS drive.

Normally, you cannot change to RAID mode when you installed Windows in another mode, you must install Windows in RAID mode or RAID will not work. That would explain your booting problem when you changed to RAID mode and moved the SSD.

But I'm confused about your RAID 0 array, that was created with the AMD RAID ROM, correct?

I also don't understand this: It will not boot from there if the RAID ROM is enabled but it will if I configure SATA as RAID0. Odd? Where is the option to enable the RAID ROM? In the manual all I see is this option: AMD AHCI BIOS ROM.

So there are SATA options for RAID and one called RAID0? Or are you talking about the Windows virtual disk RAID?

[KiwiSteve]

Re: No AHCI on SATA3_5 990FX Fatal1ty Killer

Hi Parsec,

Yes, SATA port 5 is special. I unwittingly used it incorrectly, which has lead to my current problem.

My boot drive was originally created with a fresh Windows 8 install in port 1 AHCI. I added other drives later then cloned the 840 Pro on another AHCI port. It was only much later, when I set out on my mission to create a RAID 0 array that things went wrong. Moving the boot drive to port 5 seems to have modified it in such a way that that is now the only port it will boot on. I took your bet and tried port 4 in AHCI but you lost your money; no boot.

At no stage has my boot drive operated in RAID mode (ports 1-4). It's quite happy for me to run RAID as long as it stays on port 5.

When I tried the RAID 0 array I didn't use the AMD RAID ROM (didn't know much about it), which is set from the Storage Options in UEFI. I tested the array with CrystalDiskMark and got little better than the Intel 520 single drive performance. Disappointing. However the same three drives in a Windows Dynamic Stripe achieved nearly 1 GB sequential read. Given that, I will probably start from scratch and rebuild the boot drive on port 1 AHCI and the 3 intels in ports 2-4, WD in port 5. BTW Windows Storage Space was not a good performer.

This PC is my pet, really, I set it up for good general performance and for some graphics intensive gaming. I'm quite happy to experiment with it but can't afford to have it down because I use it to connect to my workplace for monitoring and management.

Thank you so much for your input. I really appreciate it.

Cheers
Steve

[KiwiSteve]

Re: No AHCI on SATA3_5 990FX Fatal1ty Killer

In the end, this problem remained unanswered. My workaround was to prune unneeded software and files from my boot drive until small enough to clone to one of the Intel SSDs on SATA port 2. Having done that, I moved the offending 840 Pro to SATA port 1 and cloned it from the Intel disk. Now my 840 Pro is the boot disk, AHCI running at full speed. Back to the RAID 0 experimentation now.